


My One And

by Vrunka



Series: The Cruelties of Love [1]
Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Asphyxiation, Blow Jobs, Canon-Typical Violence, Dubcon if you squint, Homophobic Slurs, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Sexual Coercion, Torture, noncon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-07
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-04-19 13:35:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 22,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14238411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vrunka/pseuds/Vrunka
Summary: Only you.Staci proves his usefulness.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> You can’t have a canonical shaving scene and NOT expect me to read far, far, far too much into it.
> 
> On another note this fucking song is stuck in my head after it took me a full hour to finally beat Jacob’s bullshit boss fight.

It’s almost a month in when Staci realizes the song isn’t working on him quite like it had.

It’s still there, in his fucking head always, only you, only there, only only, round and round it goes but he’s starting to remember things. Snippets that are clear.

Only you.

Only Jacob.

But it’s clearer.

He’s holding a knife. It is so sharp, and so deadly and so decidedly beautiful as he drags it over Jacob’s skin. Clear clear. Smooth and clear.

Staci blinks. He shudders. The knife trembles in his hands.

And suddenly Jacob’s eyes which always seem to be looking through or around him are focused, laser-like, upon his face.

“Are you with me, Pratt,” he asks. Eyes narrowed. His voice isn’t shaking although there is an enemy holding a knife against his throat.

An enemy.

Only an enemy.

Staci’s hand drops away. He shakes his head, but he cannot clear the fog that seems to rise up around him again. The lake that is no longer smooth and clear as Jacob’s throat but choppy and stormy. And muddy.

My one and only you.

Jacob’s hands are touching his chin, rough fingers titling his head back to look into his eyes, a thumb on the ridge of his brow keeping his eyelids from drifting closed.

There are still flecks of shaving foam on Jacob’s neck, stuck to his lip. Rabid. He is only rabid. His breath smells like mint, a dissociative scent, at odds with the dirty, survivalist persona.

“A stronger man would have done it,” he says. He sounds contemptuous. Like it isn’t his life that would have been spilled out on the floor if Staci had.

Only his life.

Only you, only you.

Staci shakes his head. He grunts when Jacob’s hands pry the knife from him. A second one when Jacob delivers a backhand that has him reeling. Quick, unfeeling, unsympathetic punishment.

He should have done it.

If he was stronger. If only he was stronger.

I’m sorry, he wants to say. I’m trying, he wants to say. Even though he doesn’t. He wants to and he doesn’t. He’s strong enough for that.

“I’m gonna have to up your training,” Jacob says. Off-handedly. Staring down at Staci collapsed against the desk. “Cut your rations.”

They’re on starvation rations as it is. Everyone up here in Jacob’s loving arms is a bony, underfed specimen. Whippet thin. Elbows and knees and ribs.

Staci shakes his head. “Please,” he says. “No. Not that.”

Jacob has wiped the foam from his face. He lifts the hem of his shirt, runs it over the blade, wiping it clean, gun metal grey gleaming dully in the light.

Only you can make this darkness—

Staci shakes his head again. Harder. Fighting to stay surfaced. Strong enough to stay present and not slip below the tide of Jacob’s bidding.

“Are you begging?” Jacob asks. He sneers. He is already not a very attractive man, the expression twists that further. Makes him ugly. “Are you a dog, begging for scraps? Weak. Sniveling. Pathetic.”

Staci falls to his knees. “Please,” he says. “I’ll-I-I-I will—“

Do better.

“I’ll be stronger.”

Jacob sits. His legs slide apart, elbows resting on his thighs. Fingers steepled. Lost in thought.

Do it again.

“Please,” Staci says, curling forward, leaning low enough his forehead touches Jacob’s boot. The leather is surprisingly cool against Staci’s too hot skin.

It helps to permeate the fog somewhat.

He glances up the line of Jacob’s leg to his face. His eyes. Those coldly calculating eyes. The undeniable trait shared by all three brothers.

“Do you know why you weren’t given to Faith? Do you know why I picked you out of all the chaff?”

Staci’s heartbeat rolls over in his throat. His fingers are sweating against his palm. The song for the moment is muted, far away, so very far. “No,” he answers. He has no idea.

“Because you are weak, but in that weakness, there could be more. I’m not Joseph,” Jacob says. His foot flexes, forcing Staci’s chin up. “Not everyone can be saved. Not everyone deserves to be. So,” he drawls, “so, so, so. Here we are, Deputy Pratt. Ex-Deputy.

“Why don’t you go ahead,” he says, “and prove to me you deserve to be here.”

Staci braces himself for the tingling rush that always accompanies the dive. The musical cue to set his consciousness into a spiral. He grits his teeth, body tense.

But Jacob does not produce the music box.

He doesn’t move.

Neither of them move. Just awkward, stilted silence.

He exhales, his breath whistles through his nose. Jacob’s foot taps against the floor. Measured. In time with tune that is still repeating deep, deep in Staci’s head. He beings to whistle, out of key, too sharp. His hand has moved to rest on his crotch.

Signs and signs.

You alone can thrill me.

You alone.

Only.

It’s only.

Staci’s throat constricts. Panic flaring in his gut. It can only mean one thing. This thing. Only this. And if he’s misreading it? If he is wrong?

“I can always find someone stronger,” Jacob says. “More useful.” His fingers flutter where they lay. The apex of his jeans, the angle of the zipper and the seam. “We can find a better purpose for you.”

Trussed somewhere with his hands bound and his head in a bag. A stomach full of arrows. Bloody and beaten and replaced.

He is not the only one.

Staci Pratt has not ever been the only one.

“I don’t know how,” he says. He’ll do it wrong, he’ll mess it up and he’ll end up dead all the same only humiliated as well.

Only fucking humiliated and degraded.

More-so than he has been already.

Debasing himself for the opportunity to keep on living.

An eyebrow raises, Jacob’s forehead creasing. He smirks. The smile of a wolf, of a snake, deadly and reptilian. A crocodile.

Predatory.

“Pressure’s on then,” he says. “Tick tock, tick tock. My patience is wearing thin.”

Staci takes a shuddering inhale. He shuffles forward on his knees. He prays for once that the song will wrap him in its depths again but for whatever reason it doesn’t seem to be working.

Wearing thin.

Tick tock tick tock watch your time watch it watch it.

His fingers press clumsily below Jacob’s, cupping with his hands. The jean is rough against his palms. Warm undeniable weight, Jacob’s balls and Jacob’s cock. Jacob doesn’t flinch. His knees spread a touch further apart.

He’s whistling again. Lower in volume. Just a hollow, off-pitch series of notes. Staci’s fingers curl, dread and nausea coiling tight in his belly. 

My one and only you only you can make this change in me, Staci thinks, wildly. Trying to force it. The grayness, the disconnect that shields him from Jacob’s cruelty. The little shows he forces Staci through for the unbroken men.

Little displays of power that Staci can only just grasp the edges of here where the fog is not so thick. Humiliations he can barely remember.

But this, here, now, the present moment is as sharp and biting as the knife he should have killed Jacob with.

He grips the zipper hard enough it leaves an impression on the side of his knuckle, the pad of his thumb. The skin aches dully from the pressure.

Distance from this remains so, so terribly distant.

Jacob’s hands touch his head. Gripping his hair, pulling him closer. If Staci had had any questions about the intention still, they are answered now. This is going to happen, with clarity and with some measure of pain.

And it is going to happen because, despite everything, Staci truly, truly does not want to die.

Jacob isn’t wearing any underwear. It’s sobering, in a way, one less thing to worry about, one less step. The goal becoming clearer: get Jacob off, as quickly and as surgically as possible.

Oh-oh-oh-only.

Maybe it won’t be so easy.

Staci’s fingers are still trembling as he pulls Jacob’s cock free from the open placket of his jeans. It’s not hard. The skin is soft and warm and pliant in Staci’s hands. He doesn’t want to look at it, won’t look at it; he focuses past it to where Jacob’s shirt has rucked up, the unkempt trail of ginger hair across his lower belly.

“You’re blushing, Pratt,” Jacob says. His hands tightening enough in Staci’s hair that his his scalp aches dully. Jacob smiles, just the corners of his mouth twisting up and up.

Staci doesn’t answer. His gut clenches. Before Jacob can say anything else, add more insult to this injury, he leans in and licks a stripe up the flesh in his hands. It’s probably too clumsy. Too wet. But it’s been a long fucking time since he had this done to himself and—

And—

—and only you—

—and he’s never done it to someone else. The experience is foreign. The feel of Jacob’s cock hardening in his palm is foreign. Hardening beneath his tongue. Between his lips. No longer so pliant. Still just as horrifyingly soft though. Skin like velvet, untouched by the scarring that mars Jacob’s right arm and face.

Jacob makes an appreciative sound and that’s foreign too. Praise is not given in the Whitetail Mountains; it is a measured, Pavlovian sort of gift, and Staci isn’t free enough from the song not to feel a stab of pleasure at the reward.

Oh-only you and you alone can thrill me.

Staci surrenders to it. To the heady rush that runs parallel to the disgust he can feel in his core at this act. Jacob’s cock leaks precum against his soft palette, it makes his stomach turn. Makes his heart rate increase.

“I underestimated you,” Jacob says. Beneath Staci’s free hand, his hip flexes, pushing his cock deeper into Staci’s mouth. “I didn’t think you’d be this good.”

Again, again, that searing sudden pleasure that only Only Only Jacob’s praise could provide. The clenching in Staci’s lower belly that is more akin to arousal than to nausea.

Fucked up, fucked up, and it hurts. Stings what little is left of his pride. Flays it. Skins it.

Staci presses as close as he can get, drags a ragged inhale through his nose as he tries to battle down his gag reflex. He needs this to be over—needs it to be before he loses his mind even further. Before his body and the fucking song convince him that he’s enjoying this.

He squeezes his eyes shut—tears in this lashes, tears on his cheeks—and forces himself to take Jacob into his throat. The fat head of Jacob’s cock blocking his airway.

It’s only oxygen. Only life.

Only a second, two seconds, that he can hold it there before his body goes into panic. Spittle and salt and cum against the back of his throat, gagging him. He tries to pull away but Jacob’s hands tighten where they hold him and he can’t escape.

Can’t do anything but claw at Jacob’s hip. Frantic. Begging.

Jacob’s eyes are slits, tongue at the corner of his mouth. “Focus,” he says, voice grunting. The same way he sounds in the training. Stern.

Focus. Do it again. Do it. Tick tock, tick tock.

It’s only oxygen.

It’s only.

The hands relent and Staci pulls back, cranes his neck so Jacob’s cock falls free from his lips. He sucks in air. Delicious and sweet. Greedily he gulps it down. Shaking and coughing and breathing, breathing.

Jacob’s cock, red and leaking and still so hard, bumps against his chin. Not to be forgotten. Refusing to be ignored. Staci wraps his hand around it, slides his hand up and down the length.

The glide is easy, slick from his own spit.

Staci squeezes his eyes shut again. He shudders when Jacob’s fingers force his mouth open once more.

“That’s it,” Jacob says. “That’s it, that’s it.” His thumb catches on Staci’s lip, tastes like gunpowder and earth, thick against Staci’s tongue. Momentary. And then Jacob is feeding his cock back in, guiding it past his teeth.

His teeth.

His teeth.

There is something something something.

Something only a stronger man would do. Steal the knife to cut an artery, slide it from Jacob’s hip scabbard and drive it into his thigh. Or bite down, simple, like snapping a carrot with his teeth.

But he can’t.

He doesn’t know what he would do after. What he would be left with. And he’s not strong enough to face that unknown. That Jacob might not die and might not just kill him now that they have this twisted new angle to their relationship.

Weak men have their uses.

And strong men...strong men have plenty of urges.

Fear has Staci moving again. Has him fluttering his tongue along the vein on the underside, has him curling it around the head on every backstroke. He will make this good, though it disgusts him, he will make it good enough that Jacob will realize his worth. His strength.

“Shit,” Jacob mutters. “Oh-oh-“

—oh-only only you—

“-shit!” Jacob flinches, his whole body tensing, curling over Staci. His hands gripping Staci’s face so hard it hurts. His bruises, his cuts, his crookedly healed nose. Oh God, oh God they hurt.

Jacob’s cock twitches, releasing out against the roof of Staci’s mouth. Hot. It’s so much hotter than he expects, burning, boiling. Molten stripes of it spilling down his throat. Staci gags again, his fingers grip Jacob’s thighs so hard he is sure it will bruise.

And then it’s over.

It’s over.

Over.

My one, my only, my only.

Staci shuffles back as soon as Jacob is no longer holding him. As soon as those fingers loosen, he slips out and away from them. He lets his weight come off his knees once his back hits the desk again. His boots scrape against the wood of the floor.

A million feelings, all tangled up, conflicting and sparking and intense. Staci feels every one of them. The good and the bad and the righteous and the pathetic. He doesn’t know what to say or do. He hasn’t had to make these choices for himself in over a month—in almost two.

The back of his throat and tongue still taste salty and too thick.

Jacob’s hair has fallen across his brow. He fixes it back as he sits up. As he takes stock of Staci pushed up against the desk like he can melt into it and away.

If only they had never come to this place.

Only, only turned around when they had the chance.

“We’ll up the training,” Jacob says. Apropos...nothing. Picking up where they had left off before Staci’s sniveling had gotten them so far off the beaten path. “But your rations will stay as is.”

Staci blinks. It processes. The words. The meaning. Some fucked up favoritism, quid pro quo. He nods, he is nodding, sitting up straighter. “Yes sir,” he says. He licks his lips. They feel swollen, too tight. “Thank you, sir.”

“Don’t thank me,” Jacob says. “Do better. Impress me.” He tugs the music box from his jacket, winds it.

Staci has never, never been happier to hear the song. Never been happier to surrender to its call.

Only this time.

Only this time.

He can only pray this time will be the last time.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ask and ye shall, right?
> 
> Due to OVERWHELMING demand I banged out a chapter 2. Seriously, my dudes, all the comments were so encouraging I actually cried! Like legit: thank you to everyone who took the time to kudos or to leave a kind word. It means a lot!
> 
> Hope this chapter holds up to expectation! You all are so seriously amazing!

Except, of course, it is not the last time.

It couldn’t be.

It would be too easy and nothing in Staci Pratt’s life has ever been easy.

The song still works, the training, the influence, but the moments of clarity are coming more often. Clarity, not control, maybe it’s why Jacob doesn’t notice it. Doesn’t notice the wavering panic in Stacey’s eyes as his body does the things he is told to.

A bullet in the head of a defector.

Pouring water out to wash the dust from Jacob’s boots in front of men who haven’t had a drink in days.

Cruelties and cruelties.

There are kindnesses too—Jacob’s training wouldn’t work without some measure of both—but they are much fewer, much further between.

The men who brought in the latest batch of Whitetails are standing around the mess hall as Staci’s body hands out their rations. Double helpings, Jacob’s orders.

“Special delivery,” one of the men says. His red ski mask has been folded up, only his eyes and mouth showing. He grins as Staci hands him the food packet, shakes it at one of his fellows.

The other guy also grins. His fingers brushing Staci’s as he takes the food. “From Jacob’s favorite little pet, no less.”

The men laugh.

Laugh.

Like Staci isn’t standing right there. They laugh. And laugh. And Staci can do nothing. He can’t argue with them, his jaw feels locked and his throat itchy.

He wants to tell them to fuck themselves. That he isn’t so lucky as them, just faceless grunts who asked to be here. He never asked to be here.

He never asked.

He grits his teeth. His muscles strain. Flexing.

Only you only you only only

The refrain seems to spike in volume as he struggles internally for control. Wrestling for it with himself, with the song, with the ever present voice of Jacob in his head.

The last man reaching for his ration kit. Not even looking at Staci, absorbed in whatever topic the conversation has moved onto—Staci, too locked in his own head to even hear them, blood in his ears and Only You Only You drowning everything else out.

But last man is reaching for him.

And suddenly Staci has complete control.

His body snaps forward, dropping the food, the packet falls to the floor, explodes open. He has the man’s wrist in his grip, and dragging him in and twisting it just so is second nature. A disarming technique from the police academy.

Something in his arm gives with a sickening crack.

The man is screaming.

Surprise on the faces of his fellows. Surprise.

It only lasts a second.

They fall on him like vultures. Three against one. A fist catches him in the stomach, doubles him over, the perfect angle for a knee to the chin. Driving his teeth together, clipping his tongue.

Blossoming pain.

The red fog of the song opening for him like a flower. The dizzying drop from awareness to...to heat and fire and the sound of wolves in the flickering darkness.

—I understand the magic that you—

—my dream come—

My one and—

“It’s enough, I said,” Jacob’s voice is saying. Not yelling, he doesn’t need to yell, but it’s stern. Oh it’s stern.

The men sound like they are arguing. No one argues with Jacob. His word is Law. His word is Final. There’s a scuffling sound. Scraping. Someone groans.

Staci realizes, belatedly, that it is him. Crumpled on the floor. Every breath is a searing reminder of the punch to his gut.

“Get up,” Jacob’s voice says.

Even through the pain, the grip of the song wills it. Staci pulls himself to standing, clutching his stomach. He stares at Jacob.

The men are gone.

No. Correction: three of the men are gone. The one who had called Staci a pet is lying dead on the floor. Glassy eyes staring up at the mess hall ceiling, blood under his head, spilling still, sluggishly, from his throat.

“Follow,” Jacob orders.

And like a dog, Staci does.

They don’t go further down into the bunker like Staci expects. Instead they wind their way up into the offices. Jacob’s cluttered work desk, print outs and files and reports reports reports. Staci thinks of the last time they were alone up here, Jacob’s cock and Jacob’s hands.

He shudders.

The inevitability cradles him with dread. Curdles in his stomach like something gone sour.

“What the hell was that?” Jacob asks. His arms cross.

Staci licks his lips, swallows. The song does not answer for him in the way that it sometimes does. He has no programmed response here. Staci blinks, slowly. What the hell had that been?

“I...,” he starts to say. “They...they were mocking me.”

Jacob’s eyes flutter closed. He isn’t smiling. His head tips to the side, fingers scratching under his chin, through his beard.

“Sticks and stones,” he says. His eyes open, narrowed. “Lost a good soldier today, another was injured all cuz your pride took a little beating?”

“I’m...I’m not what they said I am,” Staci says. The closest he’s come in a very, very long time to being uppity. Indignation, true indignation, was bled from him in the first week of starvation and training.

“No? And what did they call you? A coward? Weak?” Jacob waits, paused. His dog tags and dog whistles moving on his chest just the slightest as he breathes. “A faggot?”

Staci’s cheeks burn at the slur. The implication the same as pet had been. That he chose this out of a series of options, like his Only choices hadn’t been this or long, drawn out death.

“Ah,” Jacob intones. “I see. I see. A sore spot for you, hm? Bullied a lot in high school probably. Kids can be so cruel.”

He does this thing, this facade where he sounds so sincere, a softness to his tone that something in Staci wants to believe. He wants to so badly. But he’s strong enough to see the lie.

He shakes his head. “I wasn’t,” he says. “I am...not weak the way they were saying I am.”

“No. You’re stupid, but you aren’t that weak. You wouldn’t still be here if you were. I’ve had my eye on Johanassen anyway; this just gave me the convenient excuse to remove him from our services early. Before things got worse.”

What things, Staci wants to ask. To press. There is trouble? Some sort of trouble? Some weakness he hasn’t seen from his own position? To ask though, to ask would be to draw attention to it. To the fact that he has heard it.

“Doesn’t give you a pass,” Jacob says. “Can’t have such...dissension in the ranks. Troublemakers. Upstarts.” His tongue slides over his bottom lip, his teeth catch on it, shiny and slick. “What do you think your punishment should be? What will you sacrifice to replace what we’ve lost?”

Again, again, the automatic responses do not kick in. Not trained for this.

But there can Only be one answer.

Essentially one.

He gets on his knees. Ripping the bandaid off in one smooth motion. It’s still stings, bites, but he can handle it. If it’s going to end up like this, one way or another, he wants it as painless as possible.

His stomach muscles still ache from where he was punched. The skin around his left eye feels tight, probably bruised real bad, he is lucky they didn’t shatter his orbital socket, break his cheekbone.

Or maybe unlucky.

Maybe it would have been better if they had killed him before Jacob arrived on the scene. Maybe that’s what he was after, subconsciously, in attacking them so recklessly.

Too late now anyway.

Too late for much of anything.

Jacob approaches him, brings a hand down to shift it through his hair. Cradling the back of Staci’s head, fingers tight against where the his neck meets his skull. He could so easily snap it.

Easily.

But he doesn’t.

“I don’t want you to get complacent on me,” Jacob says. “To think you can start getting away with stuff just because you’re more than willing to act like a cockslut.”

The words sting, brighter than the act of submission had. They tear a hole in Staci’s already fragile grip on his sanity. But he can’t really argue with it when he’s down here, on his knees ready accept Jacob’s cock.

“Yes, sir,” he says.

Jacob undoes his own pants this time, the button, the zip. He pushes them down further than Staci had been able to before. Exposing his sharp hipbones, the tops of his thighs. More pockmark scarring among the red hairs and the freckles, distracting details Staci lets himself focus on so he doesn’t have to watch as Jacob strokes his cock to half-mast.

“Open up for me, Pratt,” Jacob drawls, cock brushing Staci’s cheek as he steps closer. He smells more than last time, out in the field hiking or surveying for Whitetails before swooping in to Staci’s rescue. A musky scent, overpowering and strong.

Staci flinches as it assaults his nose, a wave in his senses, overcome, baptized. Jacob may not be all about the religion part of Eden’s Gate, but the signs are there regardless. Crosses and bibles. Sacrifices.

Staci cannot help the way his eyes keep drifting up to Jacob’s face as Jacob fucks his mouth. More active than last time, shoving in and drawing back, quick-paced. Staci can barely keep up. Can barely keep focused.

His vision swims. His fingers grasp Jacob’s thighs like they are a lifeline. Only, only, only.

Only.

They aren’t.

Dark spots at the corners of his eyes. Dancing, vibrating blackness. He struggles, uselessly, weakly. The song in his ears is fuzzy, heard from rooms away, through closed doors. It has no power over him in unconsciousness.

“Fuck,” Jacob says. Pulling back, Staci sagging against him, sucking in ragged breath after ragged breath. Shuddering. His face is a mass of pain, this abuse to his jaw does not help.

He exhales wetly, right on to Jacob’s hip. Lips moving against the skin. The bumps and imperfections. Rough edges.

Far too romantic and intimate a thought.

He isn’t as far gone as all of that.

Only he is, isn’t he? Some part of him is. Some irreplaceable, inextinguishable part. Traitorous and small. But there all the same.

He could have picked death. He could have picked resistance.

He chose this.

He chose this.

Jacob’s hands in his hair pull him to standing. Man-handle him around until he is pinned face first to the desk. Different than last time, so, so different. More volatile, rougher. Jacob presses a hand down on the center of Staci’s back, pulling on his hips with the other, forcing his spine to arch, chest pressed tight to the desk.

Sacrifice.

Jacob drags Staci’s jeans down his hips, down his thighs until they are gathered at his knees. Tangled and restricting. The edge of the desk digs into his skin, painful pressure on his cock. His soft cock. Still some semblance of sanity.

Jacob’s fingers gripping his ass. Fingers leaving bruises in the skin.

Sacrifice.

Only you when you take my hand I—

“No,” Staci says. Suddenly. Desperate. Twisting, wriggling. Trapped. Trapped. Trapped.

“Stop fighting,” Jacob warns. Leaning over Staci’s back to say it directly into his ear. His facial hair catching on the skin. Chaffing. “Stop fighting. A tool should know it’s purpose,” Jacob says. “I’m not my brother. It doesn’t have to hurt.”

It doesn’t have to maybe.

But it does.

The papers under Staci’s head flutter with his breathing, every shallow, painful pull. His wrists ache, bent double trying to hold Jacob’s weight off of him. Slowly he relaxes them, lowers them; the papers crinkle beneath his spread fingers. Jacob’s planning pushed all awry.

It hurts, it hurts. It rips. It tears. The last of him shredded. This is a fight he doesn’t know how to win. That he doesn’t have the strength to endure.

He goes pliant in Jacob’s hold.

“There,” Jacob says. “That’s better, that’s good.” His cock is a brand, scalding hot as he shoves it between Staci’s thighs. His breath is moist in Staci’s ear. “You know your place,” he says. Sounding so sincere again. So understanding. “You know this is where you belong. Right?”

Even with the song not working how it had; Staci still feels rolling, liquid pleasure at the praise. Conditioned. He flexes his thighs, clenching them, catching Jacob’s cock more fully between them. It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out, what Jacob wants from him. The sacrifice he is being forced to make.

His dignity.

What little is left of it.

“I want to hear you say it,” Jacob says.

Staci closes his eyes. He imagines a hundred different things he could say. A hundred puny, childish insults. He curls his hands into fists.

“I...belong here,” he says.

“Yeah?” Jacob asks. He’s sweating, hips still working, pushing his cock in little circles between Staci’s too-dry thighs. His beard is wet with it where his chin is hooked over Staci’s shoulder, sweating through Staci’s uniform.

“I...I belong t-t-to-to you.”

Only you.

“Only you,” Staci says.

Jacob shivers above him. His fingers twitch where they are holding Staci’s hips. His cock pulses, leaking, and for a moment Staci thinks he has come from that alone. As if it could be so simple.

“Again,” Jacob says. Pulling back, pushing in. “Keep them tight and say it again.”

“I am...”

You’re my—

My one—

Do it again. Sacrifice.

“I’m...your tool. I belong here,” Staci says. Trembling all over. Voice catching and dipping and weak. He keeps his legs tight together even when Jacob’s hands migrate from his hips to his back, to his shoulders, to his neck.

Pulling him upright by the throat so Jacob can thrust more fully against him.

Jacob’s lips brushing his ear, brushing his pulse, the hectic fluttering beat of it. “Shit,” he is saying, right there into Staci’s sweaty skin, “shit. Come on. Just a little—nnnn little tighter. You can do that.”

Staci can. He doesn’t want to. But he can, so he does.

“Yeah, that’s good. Good.”

Good.

Pavlovian. The damn song. The fucking refrain of it, sinking in his gut, swirling. The beginning twitches of a hard-on that Staci desperately wants to kill. That he can kill if Jacob would just shut up and finish.

He struggles, one arm braced on the desk to hold his own weight, the other reaching, grasping in Jacob’s hair. He turns his head as he pulls Jacob against him. Their beards rasp together, a dry, kindling sound between Jacob’s panting and the slap of their flesh.

One wrong move and everything could ignite.

If only it would. If Only.

Jacob’s tongue in his mouth is a violation more obscene than the others. Sloppy and wet, there is nothing controlled about it. No finesse, no tact.

Jacob takes what is his.

What he has claimed is his.

It keeps Staci saner than a reach-around would at least. Keeps him grounded. Keeps Jacob’s mouth fucking occupied.

Or mostly.

“—gonna,” Jacob starts to say. His voice is so thick. Lips so pink and shiny with saliva...Staci’s saliva. God it’s his. “P...Pratt,” he groans. “Fuck.”

Fuck.

Bitten off and ground between his teeth, it’s starting to have the same effect as praise. Little spikes of unwanted pleasure echoing down Staci’s spine.

But they’re so close to done, he is so close to out from under this. If he can just—

If he is strong enough to—

“Jacob,” he says. His voice reedy, whinier than he expects. He sounds broken, he has not realized it so starkly before. It hardens in his gut, self-loathing and self-pity. His eyes shut, squeeze until all he can see in his head are a million explosions.

“Hurry up and come, you f-fuckin’ bastard,” he says. Trembling. “Please.” Discordant. The song sliding out of key, out of tune.

Only, only, only.

It actually does seem to do the trick. Jacob shudders above him, hand tensing on Staci’s neck; fingers digging into the skin. His hips still, pushed as close as he can get, hipbones bruising the soft globes of Staci’s ass.

Orgasm is different this time too. Heavier. Jacob’s shaking weight suddenly collapsing on them both, crushing Staci to the desk.

Everything hurts.

Staci lays in the afterglow of it, Jacob’s cum already drying on the insides of his thighs. Impressions dug into his hips from the edge of the desk. Jacob had said that it didn’t have to hurt, but some part of Staci had known that Jacob is full of shit.

He lays there, eyes flitting over the paperwork that is still crumpled beneath his hand. It’s been there the whole time. Beneath him. His fingers flex. Timetables, shipments, numbers, names. The whole time it’s been there.

The whole time.

He narrows his eyes. Scanning what he can of the document from the angle he is at.

Jacob’s fingers, carding through his hair, distract him. He turns his head, curling in on himself. Above him, Jacob sighs.

“You probably think I’m a monster, don’t you?” he asks. Quietly. Gently. As gentle as Staci has ever heard him before.

Only.

Oh-only you can make this—

Staci closes his eyes. Forces the song down, down into the pit of his stomach. He grits his teeth. “Yes,” he says.

Jacob brushes the hair from his temples. Smoothing it back. Gentle fingers, gentle touches. Gentle, gentle.

“I’m not a monster.”

It’s debatable.

Staci’s body, still pinned, would debate it.

His eyes slide over the document under him one final time. Somewhere in him a plan is overturning. Some sort of scheme. Some sort of thought. It belongs to a stronger man, a better one than he is, but it’s forming. Birthing.

“You’re right, sir,” he says. “Monsters don’t exist,” he says. “You’re just a man.”

And men.

Men can be beaten.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again...I could write more? I don’t know if I will but...there’s some fun in the guilty pleasure of absolutely breaking down poor Dep Pratt.


	3. Chapter 3

It’s midnight when the truck pulls up.

Thursday night, Friday morning technically.

Midnight, on the dot.

Staci stands on the balcony, eyes narrowed like he is looking at the moon. But he is watching the truck. Midnight on the dot.

Midnight.

Men in dark trenchcoats, bearded and dirty move in and out and around it. The hands of the clock, ticking, ticking. Judges in pens, snarling and sleepless, dragged up the loading platform and into the body of the truck.

Gone gone.

Same as last week.

The week before.

Midnight on the dot.

“It shouldn’t be taking this long,” Jacob hisses. Standing at the desk. Hair pulled out of sorts. Jacob looks wired, despite how late the hour. He barely sleeps. A special brand of insomnia that comes with having turned two stints in war, a veteran’s mark.

Same as his fucking Judges.

But they can be killed.

And so can he.

The thought makes Staci shiver, inwardly. A new running sliver of ecstasy that is dangerous, dangerous. Getting too comfortable with the thought will leave him weak. He cannot afford to be weak.

“Sir?”

Jacob frowns. Sits. Pinches the bridge of his nose. “I sent the hunting party out hours ago,” he says. “We should have heard back by now. Unless she’s slipped them somehow.”

She.

Of course.

The Junior Deputy.

Even Staci, Jacob’s lapdog high, high up in his gilded palace has heard the rumors. Faith is dead. Viva la revolution to the east. The news had come almost a week ago now. Sightings of the Deputy moving through the mountains.

With a bear, no less.

Jacob had fucked him—truly, actually fucked him—for the first time the night they got the report. Staci hadn’t fought it, had laid on his back and let it happen. He hadn’t fought as Jacob’s lips has encircled his cock, as Jacob’s fingers had pushed into him, too thick and too rough and—

Staci glances at the clock.

Then back down at the truck. Fifteen after. Fifteen. Sixteen.

“Your hunters are the best,” Staci says, wishing even as he says it that it wasn’t true. But it is.

Jacob Only trains the best.

Anything less is...is...

Unacceptable.

Jacob’s expression tightens. His fingers twitch. “Are you trying to make me feel better, Pratt?”

Staci swallows. He shrugs. What is agency, what is act? Where does the charade end? Jacob fucked him, shaking and groaning and mourning the loss of his adopted sister. They’re in a weird place now.

More tangled and snared then before. More fucked now because Staci is making these decisions. The song is there, influencing, but Staci, Staci makes the choices.

Jacob rolls the chair back from his desk. Head tipped to the side.

“I asked you a question,” he says.

Staci looks down at his feet. “I’m trying to make you feel better, sir.”

Jacob’s eyes are narrowed still. Wary. Cautious as ever. Not paranoid, but careful. Exacting. It’s gotten worse since the rookie made her way into his mountains—the rookie, can Staci even fucking call her that; she’s killed one of the Heralds, she’s hurt the others, she’s done more than Staci, defanged and clawless, could even dream.

She’s managed to shake even Jacob, who Staci had thought of as unshakable. But maybe it’s just a lack of a plan. A lack of direction. If she gets caught. If she gets caught...then it’s just a matter of time.

And Jacob’s hunters are the best.

Only the best.

Jacob’s hands are hovering over the pocket in his jacket where he keep the music box. He pulls it out, turns it between his palms.

A threat.

A snake throwing colors.

Staci looks at the clock, just his eyes, flashing up and back down. Jacob doesn’t seem to follow the motion, his eyes are glued to Staci’s face.

“Please,” Staci says. “I’m not...this isn’t—“

“Refusing to train?” Jacob asks.

Staci shakes his head. His fingers curl in on themselves. “I...N-no. I-I-I am—“ he has to say it. Deflect it. This is the Only way he can, that he knows how to. It’s twenty after midnight and he cannot afford to be swamped in the fog of the song. Of the training. “I Only want to help,” he says.

Jacob sighs. He places the music box down on the desk. Easy reach.

Twenty-two after.

He extends a hand, palm up, fingers curling. The chemical burns in his skin are rough when Staci touches them, Jacob’s breath catching lightly in his throat. Staci wonders, briefly, if they hurt. He hopes they do.

The arms of the chair pinch Staci’s legs as Jacob pulls him into his lap. That foreign softness in the way he strains his neck up, nosing along Staci’s jaw.

“I know you’re trying to distract me,” he says. Teeth against Staci’s pulse. Scraping over the skin. The balancing act, kindnesses, and not so kind. Jacob’s hand tightens on Staci’s hip.

Staci fights the urge to look at the clock. Guilty. He stares at the rabbit’s foot hanging from Jacob’s neck, five little claws in the soft fur. “I’m not,” he says.

“Don’t lie to me.” Jacob breathes. His hands fiddling with Staci’s belt. Unclipping the leather, flicking the buckle, back and forth. “You think she’s gonna save you, right? Come riding in. White horse and all,” Jacob says. His eyes, locked on Staci’s, blue and intense. Crushing.

“I don’t need to be saved,” Staci says.

Jacob grins. Deft fingers sliding the zipper of his jeans down. Tooth by tooth. Staci curls his fists on Jacob’s shoulders. “I said don’t lie, you know I hate repeating myself, Pratt.”

“I don’t mean all that much to her,” Staci amends. His eyes dart to the clock, he can’t help it. Twenty-six. Distantly he can still hear the men. Loading the truck. The clatter of metal coming to rest against metal. “We weren’t like...,” Staci swallows, shakes his head. “Weren’t like friends or anything...before.”

“Still,” Jacob drawls. “Still. She is coming.”

His fingers draw Staci’s cock out. Cool air from the open balcony doors, a breeze against Staci’s heated skin. Prickling sweat starting to bloom at the back of his neck, under his arms. His fists clench, white-knuckled, wrinkles in the fabric. J. Seed. U.S. Army.

He bites his lip as Jacob’s fingers circle the head of his cock. Tugging at the flaccid length of it, encouraging, soft little pulls.

“I need to know,” Jacob says, “that you’re on my side, Ex-Deputy.” He sighs, leans his forehead against Staci’s collar. Staci’s nose in his hair. The off-putting, chemical smell of his shampoo.

Staci flexes his hips. “I’m with you,” he says.

Sacrifice.

“I’m yours. I’m-I-I understand. You’ve made me understand.”

—the magic that you—

Staci shivers. The song fades into the background once more. There and yet not.

He is making these choices.

His hand drops to Jacob’s, guides the fingers until Jacob is rolling his balls in his palm. Soft and careful. Squeezing lightly. The intensity of the feeling, the danger inherent, is like electricity down Staci’s back.

Gathering in his gut.

Knotting there.

“Easy to say now. I need to know it.”

“I don’t-don’t know how to prove it...ahh shit,” Staci groans. The touches are starting to take. Getting him hard. He can’t imagine a woman’s hands, an old girlfriend, his exes. Jacob is too square, too blunt, calloused and distinctly unfeminine.

“I don’t think you can,” Jacob says. Mildly. Like he isn’t jacking Staci off, like they are sitting across the desk from each other talking over coffee. “Trust takes time, Pratt.”

Time.

The clock.

Thirty-four.

And the noises from outside have slowed. Still men talking but...but...

Staci swallows. He presses his face against the top of Jacob’s head, grinds his hips down, rubbing his ass over Jacob’s cock.

“I want to prove it. Please.”

Jacob’s tongue against his throat, Jacob’s teeth, the itch of Jacob’s beard—he’ll need a trim soon, an ordeal in itself, Staci can’t focus on it right now, he can’t he can’t he Only

Only

From below he hears the sound of a motor turning over. Belching to life. It rattles around, moves beneath the window and off and away. Away. Away.

Forty-two after. Forty-two.

Last week it was forty-one.

Forty-seven the week before.

Midnight on the dot.

Midnight.

He groans, torn from him. Rolling from between his lips as Jacob unbuttons his shirt, biting down on his collarbone, all teeth, all sharpness.

“Say you’re mine,” Jacob says. “Tell me you want me.”

So cliche it almost hurts. Almost laughable. It festers in Staci’s gut, along with the arousal, the song, the ever-present fucking chorus.

“I...want you,” Staci says.

Forty-one to forty-seven. A six minute window.

“God,” Staci says. “I want you.” He grinds down again, his knees pressing into the arms of the office chair painfully. Bruising. It goes with all the others, Staci hardly even notices. “Jacob,” he breathes, fingers holding Jacob’s ears, nails catching on the shorn sides of his head. “I’m Only yours.”

“You don’t care about her? About what happens to her?”

Staci closes his eyes. “She’s strong,” he says. “Stronger than me. Maybe stronger than your men but she—No. I don’t care. She has no...she doesn’t matter to me.”

“Good.” Jacob’s grip tightens, sliding more fully around just the head. Quick, efficient strokes that have Staci grunting, panting in an effort to keep up.

He thinks of every porno he’s ever watched, every inch of slick skin and vibrating moans. The noises, Christ, the noises, and he does his best at imitating them now. More for his own benefit than for Jacob’s; anything to get him out of his own head.

“Fuck,” he says. “Yes, yes, please. Haaahh shit, Jacob. Please.”

Because he’s close.

He’s so embarrassingly close.

A six minute window—

“—don’t stop, please, Jesus—nnn fuck—“

Only you, Only six minutes, Only midnight midnight midnight on the dot.

Jacob’s tongue in his mouth, effectively silencing him. Jacob’s cock, grinding against him. The zipper must bite, all the layers keep Staci from really feeling the heat but—

“You want the whole base to hear you,” Jacob asks, roughly. Against his lips.

“Don’t care if they do.” He doesn’t; they don’t matter. “I’m yours. Only...only—“

“Don’t fucking quote the song, Pratt. Say it again.”

“I’m all yours.”

He wishes, wishes, there wasn’t some truth to it.

—

It’s one-fifteen on the dot when Jacob’s walkie crackles to life.

Staci looks up from the chair he’s collapsed into. Sweat drying in his hair, in his stubble. His cock, shrunken and soft is still hanging from his jeans.

“We got her, Sir,” is all the voice at the other end says. “Taking her with the other recruits.”

Jacob looks down at it. Little red light only just visible in the pile of his clothes. He shifts it out, brings it to his lips. His eyes are locked with Staci’s as he pushes to talk.

“Read you,” he says. “Be there shortly.”

His fingers touch Staci’s chin, run down his throat. “Ask and ye shall,” Jacob says. “Time to prove yourself, Pratt.”

Fuck.

Staci’s gut overturns, acid and bile in his throat.

Fuck.

Fuck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, I can’t thank you guys enough for all the kind words!! I have no idea how long I can keep this up or how far this plot will stretch, but hey so long as so many people are along for the ride I’m gonna keep trying.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is the first where I didn’t really write smut so....there’s something different for a change. Enjoy some plot I suppose?

The wheels squeak against the hardwood floor.

There is blood in her hair, at her temple. A black eye under her aviators. The wound on her leg, torn through the jean, perfect and round and bloody.

Her head lolls, limp on her neck, following the momentum of the chair as Staci pushes it into the room with the others. He has a second, maybe two; Jacob, at this exact moment is not watching him.

“You shouldn’t have come for me,” he says. Barely moving his lips, leaning in as he pulls her next to the projector. The first step, Jacob’s little PowerPoint.

Her fingers arch on the arm of the chair. Secured down, she isn’t going anywhere. Her wrists tug regardless, small, flighty, panicking motions. Staci touches her there, once, briefly, over the tape.

He glances up and over at Jacob.

“You should have run,” he breathes. “You—“

Jacob’s eyes on him.

Staci shuts his mouth right quick. Teeth clicking together.

Rookie groans, her head tips back. Eyelids fluttering. Her sunglasses have fallen askew, hang from her nose. Staci pushes them back up. He swallows.

Jacob watches him, passive. A predator in the trees waiting for the slightest mistake. And Staci won’t give it to him.

He won’t.

He will not.

He steps away. Scurries back from her as she begins to come more to. The Whitetails are also starting to rouse. The one closest to the screen, wearing a hat, has begun to whimper, spittle and snot dripping onto the American flag bandanna around his skinny neck.

That man won’t make it through this.

He isn’t strong enough, Staci can already tell. Can smell it in the piss that wets the front of the man’s jeans, the mess of it splashed down the chair.

Staci looks at Jacob, eyes darting to the soiled Whitetail and back.

Jacob says nothing.

Rookie awakens with a gasp. Confusion in the quirk of her eyebrows which Staci can only just see from this distance, the protective shield of her aviators. Staci crosses his hands in front of him. Squeezes his fingers in his own fist so tight he can feel the muscles creak.

From behind the projector, Jacob begins to talk. His smooth, calming speech. The ups and downs of it measured and easy.

Weakness.

Weaknesses.

Humanity’s failure. Society’s Collapse.

Staci stares at the floor because he can’t stand to look at Rook and her slack jaw and her struggling hands.

He hadn’t believed in her back then—a lifetime ago when he had been sitting in a helicopter with the sinking feeling of disquiet in his gut. He hadn’t believed even when he had seen her crossing the compound with a steadying hand on Joseph Seed’s naked shoulder. He hadn’t believed and he hadn’t believed.

And he had been wrong.

She is strong.

She is worthy.

And now it is too late.

Jacob opens the music box. Rookie’s aviators slide down her nose as her body convulses, her chest heaving, throat spasming. Her eyes are dead eyes.

So few are strong enough.

Staci has to brace himself, has to dig his nails into his own skin to avoid succumbing to the song. The siren’s pull of it. Thirty seconds. Forty. Lifetimes.

Jacob snaps the box shut.

Staci’s body slumps against the wall.

Rookie is gone. Not dead, not yet, her breasts move in shallow, rapid motions. Breathing. Jacob pushes the aviators back up her nose—gently, he can be so fucking gentle sometimes—and he looks over to Staci with a grin.

“Here’s your hero,” he says.

There she is. Staci looks away. There will be bruises on his knuckles from how tightly he holds them, crushing his fingers because because—

Its too late for her.

She won’t survive this.

Or she will.

And Staci doesn’t know which is worse.

Sacrifice.

Sacrifices.

“Still don’t care about her?”

Jacob is gloating. Smug and showy. He crosses to Staci’s side. Fingers tight on Staci’s chin, forcing Staci’s gaze up, eyes locking. So so blue and dangerous and cold.

The ocean is in those eyes.

Crushing, unfeeling, punishing depths.

Staci can feel himself trembling, shaking in Jacob’s hold. “I don’t know,” he says. “What does it matter? You’ve won anyway.”

Jacob chuckles. Cold and rasping. His fingers move from Staci’s chin to his jaw, up up up the curve of it to Staci’s ear, tucking a loose strand of Staci’s hair back.

“Winning isn’t the point,” Jacob says. “You’re missing the bigger picture.” He scans Staci’s face, looking for...

For something. Staci doesn’t know what. His confusion must be evident, palpable, not the emotion or the reaction Jacob was hoping for.

Jacob’s own expression darkens. His hand leaves Staci’s face, pushing just hard enough Staci falls back against the wall again.

“We’re leaving,” he says. Turning. The two cultists by the door nod. Staci hadn’t even been aware they were there, too focused on Jacob, lost in Jacob.

The Whitetail by the screen is already dead; eyes open, mouth open, body arched in the chair.

Staci looks away.

He follows Jacob from the room. Slightly behind the two Peggies. Not men he knows, he doesn’t think, but maybe. It’s hard to tell under the beards and dirt who is someone Staci has met before. Since the incident in the commissary, Staci has made even more of an effort to maintain distance from the other Chosen.

They leave the building and Staci finds himself blinking in the new daylight that is breaking over the mountains. Six in the morning sunshine blinding him. All the beauty and majesty of nature that even a doomsday cult can’t really ruin.

Jacob is pointing to the tree line, head leaned in to the nearest Peggie, a big man, thick and strong. Staci can’t hear what they are saying but he doesn’t care to, it doesn’t matter.

Half of the dream is dead.

Or will be.

He isn’t sure he can do what needs to be done alone.

The man Jacob is talking to nods. Looks at his fellow and the two of them move off. Staci’s eyes can only follow them so far into the trees and then they are gone. Swallowed by it.

Oh how easy it could be.

If Only.

Jacob’s rifle is so casually slung over his shoulder. Custom red paint glinting like blood in the light. It would take a solid three seconds to swivel the stock under his arm, maybe another to aim.

The tree line is too far.

Staci is too defeated.

He approaches when Jacob gestures to him. Head bowed. Deference. He doesn’t understand quite why they are leaving but...

He would honestly rather not stay to see her break.

“You can drive a stick shift, right?” Jacob asks. He’s holding keys. They dangle from his fingers. A Toyota model, basic and black, and a small fish key chain, sparkling and pink. Starkly un-Jacob. Staci takes them with shaking hands.

“Where are we going?”

“Home,” Jacob says. “But I have something I need to do. I trust you won’t drive us off a cliff, right, Pratt? Not thinking any foolish thoughts?”

“No sir,” he says.

“Good. Now let’s get out of here.”

The Jeep is painted blue instead of army green. Doesn’t blend in with the surroundings at all. As Staci climbs in the driver’s side, he finds himself wondering what happened to the owner. Someone who liked koi, and missed the sea.

Sentimentality again.

Losing track of the thread, of what he needs to do. To be strong enough to do.

The engine turns over twice before he gets it running, the clutch is more finicky then he is used to.

Jacob sits silently in the passenger side as Staci gets reacquainted with the agency of being able to drive. God, oh god it has been so long.

Nearly four months now.

A century.

A lifetime.

Rookie never should have come for him.

He puts the car in gear. The Grand View Hotel becomes just a spot in the rear view. Rook, left to die, somewhere in its bowels.

“This is a message for any Whitetails who might be listening,” Jacob is saying into his radio. Eyes unblinking, watching the road disappear beneath the car. “Surrender. Your hope is already captured. My Hunters brought her to me last night. Her fate will not befall the rest of you if you surrender to me. Even you, Eli,” Jacob says. “Everyone will have their place.”

“Is that smart, sir, baiting them like that,” Staci asks before he can stop himself. He doesn’t look away from the road, but he can feel Jacob shift beside him.

Considering.

Something noose-like in the silence. Staci feels suspended, blinded from the bigger picture like Jacob has said he was. He doesn’t have enough pieces, the ones he does have don’t connect.

“Maybe it is,” Jacob says. Finally. Staci glances at him just long enough to see Jacob cup his own chin, scratch along his jawline. “Shit,” he says, “I need a shave.”

Staci swallows. His hands tighten on the steering wheel.

“Yes, sir,” he says.

—

Eli Palmer used to work for Jacob.

No one tells Staci this, but he has plenty of time to piece the backstory together while he stands waiting on Jacob’s beck and call.

A resume pinned to Jacob’s cork board with a photo of Eli taken through trees like a stalker would. Eli’s beard grown out of control, thick and dark, rings around his eyes. A cut on his cheek.

A different man than the one from the photocopied driver’s license that also is pinned to the board.

Eli’s birthday was last week.

The detail makes Staci pause. Flutters in his gut. His own birthday is approaching. How surreal the thought.

He looks down at his hands. There is dirt under the nails, in the creases of his palms. He had not imagined twenty-seven to be a milestone in his life...now he just hopes he will even live to see it.

His eyes drift back to the board. The other pictures, the strings, areas on the map highlighted with different pens. A conspiracy theorists jumble; there is very little military order to it. Jacob’s fingers tapping on the desk—in time with Only You, measured to match, beating in Staci’s heart along with his pulse, a reminder that he hasn’t escaped, he isn’t free, it’s always there, my one and Only—are more evidence of the same.

Some of his brothers’ madnesses slipping through the cracks. Genetic, inherent. Inescapable.

Like Staci’s need to survive. The little voice in him that won’t give up no matter how broken or debased he becomes. The plan is still forming. The truck, the six minute window. Jacob is in his head, dug in like a tick, but he will make himself be strong enough to use those details to...

To...

“She’s escaped,” Jacob says.

Staci blinks, rapidly, shaking his head. Eyes narrowed he looks over at Jacob. The radio in Jacob’s hand.

It has been four days since they left her at the Grand View. It doesn’t seem possible.

“What?”

Jacob grins. Cold and so calculated. Stiff. He is gloating again so Staci must have heard wrong. Dead, maybe he said, she is dead.

Jacob swivels the chair to face Staci more fully. Legs splayed open.

“You can smile, Pratt,” Jacob says. “I know you want to. She has escaped. Well. She was rescued, but it comes down to semantics, doesn’t it? Your hero still lives that’s the important thing.”

He is still smiling.

Dangerous, dangerous.

Staci shakes his head again. The glimmer of hope he feels is unwanted, the optimism will Only hurt all the more when Jacob pulls the rug out from under whatever cruel joke this is. She is alive. Rookie is alive.

Where is the bigger picture?

“You aren’t upset by this?” Staci asks. His fingers twitch. He licks his lips.

Jacob’s teeth catch on his lip. Those reptilian eyes seem to sparkle. “We brought her in once,” he says, “the next time will be even more simple.”

“The hunt excites you,” Staci says. It feels like a quote. Something Jacob has whispered in his mind during training. Train. Kill. Sacrifice. The hunt Only excites me. You’re making this worse. You’re weak. You’re pathetic.

Jacob laughs. It’s full and genuine, from his gut, surprised out of him. He wipes a hand under his eye, runs a finger down his nose.

The silence in the car, the apprehensive waiting, the baited breath. Baited. Baiting.

“You sent that message on purpose,” Staci says. “You...you used her as bait for...”

He looks at the board. Eli Palmer, aged thirty-one just last week, bearded and homeless-looking and living in the woods in whatever cubby he’s scrapped out for himself, a ghost except when he wants to be a thorn in Jacob’s side.

Eli Palmer.

“That’s the bigger picture.”

“Ding, ding, ding,” Jacob says, dryly. “You told me she was strong and you were right. It was a gamble, she could have died before they got there,” Jacob takes a breath, licks his lips, “but she didn’t. She’s good. Strong.”

Only you.

Staci thinks of all the things he has done while swaddled in that song. Hand not even shaking around the stock of the gun, not even blinking as crying men were dragged before him. The training, sweating, bullet after bullet ripping through the shadow people in his head.

It took time though.

Took repetition.

“I can see why you believe in her,” Jacob continues. “She’s everything you aren’t. Strong in a way you can only covet.”

The words are like ice in Staci’s veins. Spiking and freezing in his skin. There it is, the punchline, the last kick at the already cowering dog. Staci had wanted to brace himself for it, but he still wound up on his ass. He looks away from Jacob, glares down at his feet. His cheeks are burning, he wishes they weren’t, wishes he had more control over his emotional tells.

He doesn’t want to be hurt by this.

She is stronger than him, he knows it. But having Jacob rub it in his face feels like betrayal. Feels worse than being insulted during training.

He shouldn’t be surprised—he isn’t surprised—but that doesn’t make it hurt any less.

“Oh, Pratt,” Jacob coos, “don’t pout.” Staci can hear the grin still. The animation in his voice that doesn’t match the emotionless shell. Staci’s nails dig into his palms. “You still have your uses,” Jacob says. His jacket rustling as he stands, approaching. Boxing Staci in against the wall.

Nowhere to run.

So little use in fighting.

He tips his head when Jacob’s teeth bite down on his pulse. Baring his throat to it. Teeth against his Adam’s apple. Claiming. Too much pressure, there will be marks, Staci can already feel the bruises forming when he rolls his head.

“You’ll be good for me, right?” Jacob asks. His fingers are already unbuttoning Staci’s shirt, shoving it off of his shoulders. It catches between Staci’s back and wall, hangs the, slight tickling pressure behind Staci’s knees.

He shifts closer to Jacob and it falls free. His arms raise to hold Jacob’s waist. Fingers shaking. Skin prickling in goosebumps, all down his bare arms. “Yes, sir, I’ll be good, sir,” he says.

Jacob hums some affirmative as his hands untuck Staci’s undershirt. Pulling it free, thick fingers slipping up and under the material to trace Staci’s abs.

It’s been a long time since Staci has looked at himself naked, so when Jacob pulls the whole thing up and over his head and off, Staci almost isn’t ready for the sight.

Muscle definition from starvation, not from exercise. Lanky, bony skinniness. Ribs. Bruises and scars. He stinks, the smell rises off of him; his last shower was...a week ago? Just a quick rinse with Jacob’s presence outside the door waiting, waiting. Staci would have called himself attractive once, but he couldn’t now, and he can’t look away. Jacob’s fingers against him are the most fascinating thing he has ever seen, he couldn’t look elsewhere even if he wanted to. Jacob’s pale skin against his own darker complexion, different different.

“You know,” Jacob is saying, “I really expected you to try something. When we brought her in. You didn’t, and I’m so proud you were so good; but...well. Some part of me was hoping.”

Staci’s breath catches in his throat. “You...wanted me to—“

“No. I would kill you if you tried. But you already knew that. I was...pleasantly surprised that you didn’t. I’ve been waiting to reward your loyalty.”

His fingers pluck at Staci’s nipple. The shock of the touch is more jolting than the small thrill of pleasure it produces. Staci flinches into Jacob, knees knocking against thigh and shin.

“I’m gonna give you some more responsibilities here,” Jacob says. “Things are going to be moving faster now. We need all hands on this.”

His own hands slide around to Staci’s back, pulling him closer. The rough twill of Jacob’s jacket itches Staci’s skin, the dog tags are cold between Staci’s pecs. Staci shivers. His face is sweating, hair sticking to Jacob’s jaw, too close to really be comfortable.

“Do you think you can handle that, Pratt?”

He can feel the way Jacob’s voice rattles in his throat, the reverberations echoed in Staci’s chest, in his head. Only only only echoes.

The song rising out of nowhere within him. Staci’s fingers squeeze down on Jacob’s hip.

“Yes, sir,” he says. He shuts his eyes, clenches them. More responsibility, what in the world could that entail? More killing? More of this?

Jacob’s big hand cups his thigh, lifts it, encouraging Staci to wrap it around his hip. “That’s my good boy,” he says.

Good boy.

Like he is a dog. A pet. Jacob’s bitch. Staci’s throat locks up, the flood of pleasure at the words drowns out any fight left in him. Good, good, good. He’s good. He’s made Jacob proud.

For the moment, it’s all his addled brain could ever want.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always thank you to everyone who commented or kudos’d. We’re deep in it now so keep an eye out for the next chapter sometime this week.


	5. Chapter 5

They are fucking when Joseph arrives.

Not even a little bit subtle; Jacob on top of him, thumbs spreading Staci’s ass cheeks wide as he drives in. Deep. Deeper than when Staci is on his back. Spearing him, Jacob’s fat cock keeping him open and gasping.

He still hates this.

But it’s impossible to deny Jacob is good at taking what he wants.

Staci presses his palms to the mattress, squaring his shoulders so he can match Jacob’s thrusts. His hair drags sweaty through the sheets. Sweat dripping from his arms.

“Shit,” he groans. “Jacob...I-I—“

He never gets to finish the sentence.

The door opens.

And there is Joseph.

In all his serene and buttoned up glory. Tucked in shirt, collared and pressed, vest fitted, the pleat of his pants sharp enough to cut. To gut.

To maim.

Staci’s voice dies in his throat. Shrivels. Jacob’s hand pressing between his shoulder blades is the only thing that keeps him from fleeing, from burrowing into the sheets and away.

Jacob, for his part, beyond the hand suddenly trapping Staci against the bed, doesn’t move all that much. Doesn’t seem fazed. His hips stutter to a stop against Staci’s ass but he doesn’t pull out.

“Have you ever heard of knocking, Joe?” Jacob asks. The tone alone has killed lesser men. Has stopped their hearts.

Staci’s own is beating triple time, quadruple. He’s not sure how he is still conscious, how it hasn’t sent him into cardiac arrest. His fingers twitch in the bed spread.

He cannot look away from Joseph’s face. His eyes cool and passive behind those yellow-tinted glasses. Not even blushing. Not even scandalized to have literally walked in on his brother balls deep in their hostage.

“I needed to speak with you, brother,” Joseph says. His eyes flicker between the two of them. “About the...wayward sheep.”

The Deputy, he means Rook. Staci huffs, his fingers still, frozen. He wants to talk about Rookie; about an update on her? Something new?

“Perhaps you should...” Joseph seems to consider what to say, trailing off. “Should release our dear...Pratt, was it?”

It’s asinine, but Staci nods, dumbly, at the use of his name. Jacob’s fingers that are still clutching his hip squeeze. Possessive. His cock is an unmoving discomfort that is quickly becoming unbearable. Staci’s skin feels like it’s crawling, itching to be off his body and away from this whole ordeal.

Joseph’s stare is so sobering. Even as free of judgment as it is, as passive, as gentle.

“Pratt. Yes, of course, Staci,” Joseph says. Staci’s gut trills at the realization that he is known, recognized. Of course he is; Joseph had personally overseen him dragged from the helicopter that night. Had looked him in the eye and declared him Strong enough for Jacob’s care.

Joseph is the reason he is in this fucking mess.

Literally, as the case may be.

As if Jacob can read his thoughts, his hips pull back just the slightest bit, they push back in. His cockhead drags across Staci’s prostate; has Staci biting his lip, fighting not to arch into the sparking rightness in the stimulation.

“We should speak privately,” Joseph says.

Jacob chuckles. “Right,” he says, “of course. You sure you don’t want to let me just finish up or—“

“Jacob.” The warning in the tone reminds Staci of that night. Joseph illuminated by flickering torches and flashlights. Deific. Powerful.

“Right, right,” Jacob says. He pulls out. Without warning. There and then not. Staci shudders. His breathing catches. His fingers tear at the sheets. “Get up, peaches,” Jacob says, swatting at Staci’s ass, “wait for me outside.”

Staci is shaking as he sits up, pulling the blankets into his lap to cover himself. Muscles complaining from leaving the position they had held for so long. His knees ache. His lower back twinges. He begins to reach for his pants, the closest article of clothing to him, caught in his boots right next to the bed, but Jacob’s hand catches him again before he can. Shoves him just hard enough he has to leave the shield of the covers before he topples to the floor.

“I said outside, Pratt, now.”

The order in it leaves little and less room for debate.

Humiliated, blushing, Staci wraps the comforter around his shoulders and shuffles from the room.

“That wasn’t very gracious of you,” Staci hears Joseph say as the door begins to close. “You know that God is watching everything we do.”

“Yeah,” Jacob says, “I figured you wouldn’t like it. Didn’t figure this is the way we would have to talk about it but—“

The door clicks home, fully shut. Muffling the voices behind it. Jacob’s familiar rumble. Joseph’s slightly lighter cadence.

Staci’s fingers are white-knuckled, holding the threadbare comforter tight, tight around him. It’s too short, his legs poke out from the mid-thigh downward, spindly and knobby, knees and shins. He leans back against the wall.

Eyes closed. Ear cocked against the crack. There is no keyhole or he would be pressed to that, desperate for any information Joseph has.

Distinctly, surreally, Staci remembers doing exactly this the summer he turned eight. He remembers pressing himself to his parent’s door, trying to hear as they discussed sending him to baseball camp and God how he had wanted to go, more than anything because Jamie O’Donovon was going and they were best friends, inseparable and he had never wanted anything so badly as to be away with his best friend for weeks on end. The physical ache of it echoes here, now, almost twenty odd years later.

They didn’t have the money.

He never did go to baseball camp and Jamie O’Donovon would take a bullet in Afghanistan during the war on terror and bleed out somewhere in the sand. They hadn’t talked in years. Staci would not even attend the funeral.

He pushes the memories away. He grits his teeth to keep himself grounded.

“—out of your mind,” a voice behind the door says. Jacob. At this point Staci could recognize it almost anywhere. “Maybe you can feed this ridiculous bullshit to John, but not to me, Joseph. She’s a fucking—“

“Language, brother. I understand, believe me, I can feel your wrath. The hatred burning and burning and burning inside you. And I know. I do. But you must hear me. It’s bigger than us, than this. God has told me—has shown me—that she will listen. With John’s love and my love and yours. She will see and she will know, brother.”

The bigger picture. Staci has been better about defining Jacob’s; he’s in charge of book keeping now, tracking the progress of the poor people trapped in the cells downstairs. Pass or fail. Alive or dead. Useful as a fighter or as...as fodder. Who to cull and who to keep.

“So you want me to-to-to what, Joseph? Hmm? Bring her here? So you can...can love her?”

“I can assure you it will be kinder than the love you are showing our guest Deputy Pratt.”

“He knows his place.”

“Yes, I’m sure,” Joseph says. He moves away from the door, his voice grows fainter. “Our rules mean so little to you, I know.”

“Rules maybe. But not you. You want me to stop and I will.” Jacob pauses. Staci can imagine him, hesitating, licking his lips maybe, wetting them. “You want me to bring her in, so I’ll bring her in. Is that what you want to hear?”

Joseph’s response is lost in the distance. Whatever he says makes Jacob chuckle. The sound of it moving away as well. Away from Staci, away from the door.

They are going to bring her in. Another round of exposure to the training and the song. One...two...Staci takes a step to the left, leaning against the wall. Head cocked back, studying the ceiling as he tries to work out a plan. The six minute window. One, two...

“You’re still here.”

Staci jumps at the sound of Joseph’s voice. Joseph standing at the door, with it opened just a crack. Staci can hear Jacob’s voice beyond, the crackle of his radio, orders. Probably to his hunters.

Staci swallows. He nods. “He told me to stay,” he says.

Joseph slides out from behind the door, shutting it behind him, closing Staci off from eavesdropping on Jacob further. Whether it is intentional or not, Staci cannot know.

“Ah,” Joseph says. “I see. He did say you were good at following orders. At falling in line. Do you believe in our cause, my son?”

Staci swallows again. His throat is so dry. He doesn’t know what to say, so on the spot. He thinks they’re all fucking crazy, even trapped in the crimson fog of Jacob’s influence he thinks that. Only You Only extends so far. Doomsday in general is beyond his paygrade, his realm of acceptable.

Joseph smiles. Same smile as Jacob’s, just the corners of his mouth lifting up. So much alike, cut from the same cloth. “It’s okay,” Joseph says. His hands touch Staci’s shoulders. He radiates heat, Staci feels scalded even through the blanket. “You will, eventually. The Great Collapse is not so far now but my brother will keep you safe through it.

“I am sorry for the way things have gone,” Joseph continues. Ignoring or not noticing the way Staci squirms in discomfort. “I never expected him to...resort to such...methods. He has always been a fighter, I’m not sure he knows how to love any other way.”

“You could tell him to stop,” Staci says. “If it bothers you so much. You could-could forbid it, he would listen to you.”

“Perhaps he would. But where would that leave you, Staci Pratt?”

Where would that leave him?

The possibilities unfurl like a winding series of vines. Both good and bad. He would have more time on his hands to plan his plan. More time to become complacent and slip back into the damning influence of Jacob’s training. Bereft of Jacob’s special attentions and at the mercy of Stronger mens’ urges.

He has come to something like terms with Jacob fucking him.

He could not do it for the rest of the bunker.

Joseph’s hands move to his neck, cupping his chin. Palms rasping against his stubble as he tugs Staci’s face forward. Touching their foreheads. Gentle, fatherly. “Do you see,” Joseph asks, whispering. His breath wafting over Staci’s face. “Do you understand?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t have to. Trust Jacob. Can you do that?”

Not in a million years.

“Of course, sir.”

Joseph’s hands release him. He smiles. Deific again, serene as a painting. “Of course. You should go in,” he says, “Jacob will probably be waiting on you.”

He isn’t, exactly. He’s bent over the desk with the radio receiver pressed to his lips. Still shirtless but he has tugged his jeans back over his hips, not even zipped them if the way the back of them dips is any indicator.

Staci doesn’t say anything.

He stands inside the door to Jacob’s war room and takes a moment to study Jacob’s uncovered back. Something in him recoils from the intimacy of it; usually their fucking is more hectic, frantic, half-dressed, shirts simply shoved up out of the way for convenience sake. Jacob has a nice body, despite the burns and the scars and the fucking starvation. The muscles of his back are sleek and tight. His shoulders strong and knotted.

He doesn’t have the same tattoos his brothers do. No sins as far as Staci can see, no ritualistic scarring marks like Joseph has.

He clicks the radio off. He looks almost surprised when he turns to see Staci standing by the door.

“Joseph talk to you?” Jacob asks.

“I think he was trying to reassure me.”

“He does that. Reads people pretty well, mostly.”

Mostly.

She’s a fuckin—

Mostly.

“He’s a bleeding heart, but that’s what I’m here for. That’s my purpose.”

“You cull the herd.”

Jacob grins. His dog tags flash in the light, moving with his chest as he breathes. He holds his hand out, cocks his wrist. Come here in the motion, he doesn’t even need to say it.

Staci goes. Damned, damned, Staci goes. He expects to start right where they left off, expects to be manhandled right to the bed and claimed again.

He gets something much different.

Jacob’s forehead resting against his own, the same way Joseph’s had; Jacob’s hand pressed flat and large over Staci’s trembling stomach. There is weakness, vulnerability in the way Jacob’s eyes are shut, in the way he holds Staci against him so gently.

Weakness.

A stronger man would—

Staci silences the thought, strangles it. This is not the time for it. This is not the place. Friday is too far away.

He lifts his hands, holds Jacob’s face between them. Jacob’s beard is soft against his palms even though it looks like it should be bristly and rough. I’m not sure he knows how to love any other way, Jospeh says in his mind, and Staci kills that train of thought as well.

He will not feel sorry for Jacob Seed. He will not feel pity. No weakness.

He will do what he needs to to survive.

He will do what he needs to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This leads pretty much right into the the Second Capture point for Jacob’s territory which I probably won’t be recapping because reading Joseph’s monologue could be pretty boring. The next chapter will pick up right after so...that’s where this fits in the timeline I guess. Man who knew being canon compliant could be so much work D:


	6. Chapter 6

She is gone again. Staci Pratt stares at the cell where she had been, scuff marks on the dirty concrete. Signs of a struggle.

When the Peggies had come down to take her, she had been deep, deep in it.

Staci is not exactly surprised.

The stutterer is gone too. And a man from three cells down.

One of them will be strong enough to surface and Staci already knows it will be Rook.

One, two.

Three. The magic number.

He prays there will be no three for her training, that once she has her freedom—her barely scrapped by freedom, her luck of the fucking Irish freedom—that she won’t look back. That she’ll realize she can’t win. He prays she will leave well enough alone like she should have from the start.

Run, he thinks. Fucking run.

Only you. Only her. One. Two. It’s starting to clear further, the puzzle is beginning to have defined edges. The radio on her belt crackling to life every couple of days; Eli Palmer’s voice hailing her.

Eli Palmer.

And all it will take. One. Two.

Three.

The magic that you do, you’re my dream come—

Staci closes his eyes. Being down here, in the thick of it, constantly surrounded by Jacob’s song and unwilling souls trapped in Jacob’s training is taking its toll on him. He has not ever slept well here and being busy, having an actual job where Jacob is keeping tabs on his progress and expecting results isn’t helping.

Jacob had grinned every single time Eli’s voice had flooded the cell. Wolffish. Predatory. Staci can imagine how he must have itched to answer it every time; the need to gloat, to peacock. Jacob Seed so fucking smug like a child at his victory.

But he hadn’t.

And Staci hadn’t done anything heroic either. Hadn’t grabbed the radio every time Eli called and screamed at him to beware, to fucking run. That it’s all coming to an end. All...collapsing around them.

Self-restraint from the both of them.

Amazing, amazing.

And now she is gone again.

“Thought I might find you down here,” Jacob says from the stairs. Staci doesn’t flinch at his voice even though they haven’t been alone together in almost a week. “Brooding, huh?”

Staci feels an urge to snap back at the barb, the fake sweetness in Jacob’s tone. He hasn’t felt that insubordinate streak in a while, a long, long time. For a moment he turns it over in his head. Then he lets it go.

“Where did you take her?”

“I didn’t take her anywhere, peaches.”

The nickname. The fucking nickname. It’s almost worse than anything else Jacob has come up with to torment him. Sticks and goddamn stones again. Once upon a time, Staci would have thought himself thick-skinned.

Oh oh what an idiot he had been.

“Can we not play this game? Where did you order her taken?”

It’s too far. Too much. Jacob has a hand on the back of his neck, pulling him backwards, manhandling him against the nearest wall. A prisoner in the cell next to them recoils at the sound of Staci’s body slamming into the concrete. Staci’s breath leaves him in a rush. His ribs ache at the solid blow.

“I don’t think that’s really any of your fuckin’ business, Pratt.” Jacob’s arm slides across Staci’s throat, pinning him.

Already winded, out of breath, a little pressure is all it takes to cut off Staci’s air completely. He struggles, uselessly, fingers grabbing at Jacob’s clothes, that arm that is like corded iron, digging his nails into the flesh. The frantic, panicked fight only makes it worse. Black spots in his vision, melding at the edges. Blurring together.

“So quickly you forget your place,” Jacob says into his ear. Voice amplified in a way that should not be possible with unconsciousness floating close enough to kiss. “So quickly a little bit of freedom goes to your head. What are you?” Jacob asks.

Staci shakes his head. He cannot answer. His tongue feels dry, swollen, jutting from his mouth. His eyes are too watery, everything is swimming. His head is hundred miles up and rising higher, Only higher; a balloon. Ready to burst at any second.

But fuck at least he is away from all this.

There is some peace to be found in that.

Reality comes crashing back with a vengeance. Staci’s plunge to earth aided by Jacob’s hand, smacking resoundingly across his cheek. The pressure lessens on Staci’s throat and sweet, sweet, damning oxygen is like Bliss to Staci’s system. Colors seem to spike, noise like static across Staci’s brain, like feedback from a radio tuned too sharply.

He shudders. Arches. Still holding Jacob’s arm, gouging the broken, imperfect skin as his body tries to process the conflicting signals running rapid fire through it.

Blood under his nails.

Staci stares at it dripping in high definition from his fingers, from the furrows dug into Jacob’s arm.

How quickly, how quickly the mood can change. Only you can make this change. Only. Ah ah only.

Jacob’s eyes widen. So blue and so magnetic that Staci can almost feel the gaze of them like electricity across his face. A knee shoves between Staci’s thighs, jams too roughly into his crotch. Staci hisses at the contact, burgeoning desire blooming in his gut. It’s not fair Jacob can play his body this way, that Jacob is the Only one in this fucked up dynamic with that power.

Staci groans. He bites his lip. His erratic breathing whistles through his nose, high-pitched, whining, like a tea kettle. He still feels like he might burst like one, pop from the lightheadedness.

“Holy shit,” Jacob whispers. “You’re really into this, huh?”

“N-no,” Staci says. Gritting his teeth.

Jacob lays his body weight back onto Staci’s already tender throat and Staci shudders again, involuntary, hips shifting to drag his cock against the teasing pressure of Jacob’s thigh. “Don’t. Lie. To. Me.”

Every word is a world of its own.

Drowning Staci in them. Dragging him down, down into blackness where there is Only sweet, sweet nothing. And then air again, clarifying, intoxicating. Staci sucks it through his teeth, gulps it like water.

“Christ,” Staci grunts, “fuck. Yes. I’m—“ He’s blushing now, he can feel the blood in his cheeks and down his neck.

“What are you?”

Weak.

Pathetic.

“Yours.”

Jacob licks his lips. The hand not currently occupied cutting off Staci’s oxygen curls on the wall next to Staci’s head. His knuckle is bleeding, must have caught on Staci’s tooth when he backhanded him.

“You’re full of shit,” Jacob says.

Staci shakes his head. He’s so dizzy. He feels wrecked, fucked out, broken, broken. Jacob’s breath ruffles his hair. Stiflingly hot between the two of them. A thousand degrees.

“I’m...not. You’re right, I forgot it. I thought I-I-I...Joseph seemed to—“

“You can call him the Father,” Jacob says. Warning in his tone, in the flash of his eyes.

“The Father,” Staci amends, “seemed to want more from me. But. But. But. I’m just...a tool. And I’m weak. I’m yours though. O-only yours.”

“Do you want to be free?”

Staci desperately wants to nod, to scream until his throat is bleeding, God to be free of this, of all of it. He shakes his head instead. He thinks of the truck, the rumble of its engine, midnight on the dot.

“If you were free, out there, wandering,” Jacob says, “someone stronger would simply come along and devour you. That is the way this world works. This new world. Survival of the fittest.”

Dog eat dog and eye for an eye.

Someone would devour him.

Devour.

Like Jacob isn’t already.

Staci nods. But he looks away. He has to. His eyes flit from the strong square cut of Jacob’s shoulder to where their bodies are touching and off to the left. The prisoner awake in the cell next to them is watching. Fucked up sense of self-preservation, but Staci guesses he wouldn’t turn down front row tickets to a free show in this hell hole either.

He looks back up at Jacob before Jacob notices their audience.

He doesn’t know what to say beyond the need to say something.

“Will you...take—“

—my hand I understand the magic that—

“T-that is...can we go...”

“I distinctly remember telling you that I wasn’t going to give you special treatment just cuz you act like a whore,” Jacob says. Low and deadly, from his belly. His lips bare inches from Staci’s; dryer than normal, little cracks in the skin.

“I’m sorry,” Staci says. “Please.”

Please, please, please.

“What if I wanted to fuck you right here? Hmm? In front of all these people,” Jacob asks. Fourteen in all, mostly civilians, a couple of Whitetails tortured to the point of madness. “Show them what a little too much free will nets you.”

Staci is shaking. “I-if you wanted,” he says. His stomach turning even as the words leave him. His erection has already begun to wilt, smothered by his fear, by flip switch of Jacob’s whole persona. The rollercoaster of it had seemed to steady while Joseph was here, but Joseph has been gone for a few days and...

“You can stop trembling so much,” Jacob says, “I’m not going to do that to you.” The threat of it still hangs between them, but Jacob smooths his hands through Staci’s hair, a counterpoint to the cruelty which follows. “I don’t get off on being watched like you seem to.”

His lips touch Staci’s ear as he whispers into it. “You’ve noticed him too, haven’t you? Prisoner J. Edwards, brought in three nights ago. He’s watching. Can’t wait to see you bend over and take it.” Jacob’s tone shivers between goading and gentle. Dances between possessive and honeyed.

Staci’s gaze returns to the man in the cell. J. Edwards. One of the Whitetails. He didn’t give up the Wolf’s Den. He was strong. Even now without fingernails on his right hand, he is strong. And watching them still, through slitted eyes, feigned sleep. Oblivious to what they are saying.

“He doesn’t matter,” Staci says.

Jacob clicks his tongue. “Everything matters. It’s what keeps you alive, staying on top of it.” Jacob takes a step back. Staci sags against the wall, his knees shake as his body weight is distributed back onto them roughly.

His throat hurts. Not a little bit. Aches down to his very core. He rubs a hand over it. His other wrist is in Jacob’s grip, as Jacob turns it and coaxes the fingers open, as Jacob presses the handle of his service revolver into his hand.

“So take care of it. The cancer in our midst. Cull it. Strengthen us. Then we will go upstairs.”

Staci’s curls his fingers around the stock. Hefts the weight of the gun. How many bullets? How many of these fucking pathetic victims can he shoot and still have a bullet left for Jacob, a bullet left for himself?

Staci shudders.

He turns from Jacob.

The sound of the gunshot it deafening, bounces against the concrete. Only, Only, only, only, only until it fades. Jake Edwards’ brains dash against the wall.

“Good boy,” Jacob says.

—

They’re barely back in Jacob’s room and Jacob is already stripping him. Staci’s Hope County uniform catches between his feet, tripping, tangling. The Only thing that keeps him from falling is Jacob’s frame, Jacob’s arms. Jacob. Jacob.

He pins Staci to the bed, uses all that superior muscle and bulk to crush Staci against the mattress. No lingering sweetness this time around, no special treatment. A drizzle of cold lube down Staci’s crack and really only a token nod at stretching. Jacob’s got two fingers in him, twisting them, spreading them.

And God damnit something in Staci fucking likes it. Thrills at it. That knife edging of pain that could almost be pleasure. Just like the choking, so easy to let his mind slip into a haze where he doesn’t have to make choices for himself. Like Jacob’s training.

In the aftermath, in the come down, he will feel ashamed like he always does, but for now he grinds back against Jacob’s hand, panting and cursing. Making a show of it. If he can do one thing right, it’s make this good.

It’s not an act when Jacob starts to push in and Staci’s body goes liquid. Trembling and humming in an effort to remain relaxed and loose. Jacob mounts him like one of his fucking wolves, one leg cocked, pressed against Staci’s hip for leverage.

“Shit,” Jacob says, gritted between his teeth. More of a growl than anything nuanced and human. “Fuck you’re always so tight for me, Pratt.”

At least it’s not peaches.

Staci groans. He grabs at Jacob’s wrist, where Jacob’s hand is fisted in the threadbare sheet right by his head. The slash of red across the knuckle, already scabbed. It’s grounding, the sight of it, helps him to stay focused as Jacob begins to rock against him. Too quickly. Not enough time to adjust to the abuse of his body. The burn of his muscles.

He’s hyper-aware of everything. Every twitch of Jacob’s cock, every shuddering inhale Jacob takes, the dog tags tickling between Staci’s shoulder blades. The soft fur of the rabbit’s foot sticking to his sweat.

“I missed this,” Jacob says. So quiet it almost isn’t there. “Didn’t think going a week would—fuck—“

His hips pump, rough and deep, like he intends to fuck his way into Staci’s stomach, up his throat. So deep he’ll be part of him forever.

Forever.

There’s a horribly sobering thought.

The word Only wrecked forever. And Staci’s body wrecked forever. And his mind.

The chill settles in Staci’s stomach like a cobweb, clinging and nearly invisible. It feels wrong. It feels numbing.

Staci goes lax. Goes limp. He wills his mind away from the spiraling depression he can feel opening inside of him. What good will it do? What will it help him achieve?

He stands at the edge of the precipice. Looks down at bloody landscape that will be left to him if he gives into this weakness.

Sacrifice.

It makes him stronger. Jacob is right about some things. He squeezes his eyes shut, fists a hand around his cock before it can go soft.

She is out there somewhere. The truck will be here, Friday, midnight. The six minute window. These small shreds of hope.

It’s Only forever.

He’ll have the rest of his life to dwell on the sadness of it. For now. For now.

“Fuck me,” he whines, arching his back. Flexing his hips so each of Jacob’s thrusts brand him deeper. There are tears in his lashes, wetness on his cheeks. Could be sweat but...

The hand next to Staci’s head flattens, flips, lifting to pin Staci’s hand beneath it. Fingers entangling. That familiar intimacy that clashes with the classical conditioning and cruelty. The small, soft humanizations.

“You’ve always been mine,” Jacob whispers. “You’ll always be mine.”

Always.

Forever.

God, fuck forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jake Edwards is one of the Whitetail npcs I found as a gun for hire and he’s literally carrying my ass through hard mode so. Cheers to you Jake, sorry for murdering you.


	7. Chapter 7

There is radio silence for a few weeks and Staci is dumb enough, weak enough, that he lets it get his hopes up.

He goes about his duties as if nothing has changed. He culls the weak, puts their names on a list and watches silently when the Peggies come down to ship them off to wherever they are needed. Needed. God, the word lodges uncomfortably in his head. How easily it comes to him.

How can these people be used?

What is their purpose?

He’s starting to think like Jacob wants and it disgusts him; even when he cannot stop it. He stares at the back of Jacob’s neck as Jacob sorts some issue or other. He’s looking over charts, scribbling things out and rewriting the values. His handwriting is cramped and slanted, not as boxy or messy as Staci would have guessed. It’s an odd thing to notice but the detail is there, circling.

There is so much he doesn’t know about Jacob, no matter how many times they fuck, how often Jacob comes inside him. There are vital things, clues to a person under the shell.

Staci rips his gaze away.

He will not humanize Jacob fucking Seed more than he already has. He will not. He cannot. It will only hurt him more.

When the short wave radio on Jacob’s desk crackles to life, it’s almost a relief, a distraction from the endless waiting that comes with being Jacob’s favorite pet, his broken little bitch. Almost a relief.

Staci is halfway through a sigh when the voice breaks through the silence of the room.

“Fuckin—shit. I don’t know if this is—“

A sound from behind the speaker. The pop, pop, pop that Staci instantly recognizes as gunfire.

His stomach plummets.

The transmission cuts. Jacob picks up the mic but before he can say anything the voice is back.

“She’s cut the alarms,” the man says. His voice is panicked, a high, grinding edge too it. “This the Ranger Station. We’re—she’s fuckin’—We need back up! Please! We need—“

It cuts again. A sharp, scream of static. And then silence.

Jacob’s fingers are still curled around the dispatch mic. From where he is standing Staci can see his narrowed eyes, Jacob’s teeth digging into his lower lip. Bared like something animal. He has control and yet. And yet.

His finger starts to move, his mouth opens. Small white impressions on his lip, little lasting bite marks.

“Don’t,” Staci says.

Jacob’s eyes are on him before the word has even fully left him. They burn in a way that should not be possible. Cut through Staci like something physical.

“What the fuck did you say, peaches?”

Staci swallows. He shakes his head. “Don’t send anyone.”

“I thought we had been over this. She—“

Staci shakes his head again. He takes a step forward. Hand outstretched. “It’s not about her. It’s...needless. You’ll send a dispatch and...what? You’ve already seen what she is capable of against numbers. You already know.” Staci’s fingers reach Jacob’s; gently, carefully he coaxes each one off the receiver. He steps in closer, his shoulder brushes Jacob’s chest; he places it down back in front of the radio.

“It doesn’t matter how many bodies you throw at her, sir, you’re just gonna get back corpses.”

Jacob’s nostrils flare. His eyes are still narrowed in thought, but there is something going on behind them. A flicker of some emotion Staci can’t quite trace.

“You just want my men to die,” Jacob says.

“The Ranger Station is her’s, it’s done. Seems a waste of good tools sending in more fodder for her.” He can see the way the logic tugs at Jacob, the argument that must be going on within his head.

This is another part of it, Staci realizes with a jolt. The six minute window (shaved to eight now, last week and the week before pushing the time back and then forward again but it’s still six minutes in his head, only six only six only six) is all well and good, and the details on the patrols that Staci has been marking in his head. But it’s useless if Jacob doesn’t trust him.

If Jacob doesn’t trust that Staci has got Only his interests at heart. Just Jacob. Only Jacob.

Jacob licks his lips. Their faces are close enough Staci can still see the indents left by his teeth earlier. The freckles that are nearly invisible down the bridge of Jacob’s nose. Sun damage. Crows feet at the corners of his eyes.

“It’s her’s,” Staci says again. He moves the same hand he had reached out with earlier and cups Jacob’s jaw. The soft, soft hair tickles against his palm. Jacob’s eyes flutter shut.

He practically nuzzles into the touch, pushing into the contact like a dog would. Before this moment, Staci hadn’t thought about how lonely it must be being the Good Soldier sacrificing everything for—

Staci bites his own lip.

He kills that train of thought, derails it. There is a reason he hasn’t done this. There is a reason.

Jacob Seed is a man who needs to be stopped, to be beaten. He doesn’t need a tragic backstory or some bullshit softness. He is as close to a monster as they come.

And right now Staci needs his trust more than anything.

“Sir?”

“I hear you,” Jacob says. Not quite snapping. His eyebrows flex but his eyes remain closed. He leans forward, forehead touching Staci’s; his breath on Staci’s cheek. “I hear you, Staci.”

Staci.

The first time he has heard his name from Jacob’s lips maybe ever. Certainly the first time in this setting.

It’s enough.

Staci pushes up on the balls of his feet to press his lips against Jacob’s, to catch them with his own. Maybe the boldness of it takes Jacob by surprise, he stiffens at first, breath hissing through his nose. Then he relaxes, somewhat. His hand moves to hold Staci’s hip but other than that, nothing.

He doesn’t pull away.

He doesn’t try and control it any further.

This isn’t normally the way they do things; kissing is generally an afterthought, a claiming kind of ritual. But Staci is in the lead here and the kiss follows a certain tenderness he has always been fond of in lovers.

That this is not the scenario he ever pictured it in is a moot point.

Staci frees his lips enough to take a gasping breath and Jacob makes a noise deep in his chest. A whine like something wounded, animal. His chin tilts to follow Staci’s movement, eyes still closed. Nuzzling.

A man in his forties. God, Staci thinks, have some fucking composure.

But then again, Staci himself isn’t much better off. Panting from just making out, already half-hard if he’s being completely honest.

Not that there is time for that.

Staci steps back. There isn’t much room to go, trapped between Jacob’s body and the desk. The radio still so deadly silent. The Ranger Station is her’s; belongs to the resistance once more.

“Are you thinking more clearly now?” Staci asks. He tries to make his tone teasing, light. Some ramshackle parody of flirting.

He used to be good at that too but oh, oh how times do change.

Jacob’s eyes flutter open. He swallows. Staci can trace the bobbing movement of his Adam’s apple. The dip of it, the swell of it. The flickering of the skin over his pulse point.

Human, human.

“I guess so,” Jacob says. “You’re right. This time.” He leans in and for a moment Staci expects to be kissed again, he braces for it; but Jacob reaches past him. Grabs the walkie from the dock next to the radio. His shoulder is pressed tight to Staci’s ribs, unnecessary contact. Causal and so sure.

Lovers, Staci thinks again.

My one and only.

Stop it.

Sacrifice it.

Kill it.

“Besides,” Jacob says, “we have better ways of bringing her to heel.”

To heel.

Only to obey. To train.

This isn’t what he had meant but if he wants Jacob’s trust, needs it like air or water or food, then he needs to get his shit together. Staci places a palm on Jacob’s hip, thumb just shy of the bone. He can feel Jacob’s breathing, the easy measures of it with his words.

“The human brain is such a fascinating thing,” Jacob drawls into the walkie. Eyes focused past Staci. Clear and blue and driven. “Once you start poking around in there, it’s surprising what you get it to do under the right circumstances.”

He takes a breath. His stomach trembles under Staci’s thumb. “You’re familiar with the term ‘classical conditioning’, right Deputy,” Jacob continues. That low, confident whisper in his voice. So in control, so cool. “It’s where a conditioned stimulus...say a song—“

Only a song. Only one song. Only, Only, Only. Staci’s fingers curl. His nails catching on Jacob’s jeans. Panic that isn’t justified rolling in his throat. The fog he hasn’t felt so clearly in a long time.

Jacob’s steady voice. Jacob’s solid bulk.

He misses most of what Jacob says following that word. Hearing a wholly different series of words in his head.

Train.

Kill.

Sacrifice.

“To sacrifice,” Jacob says into the mic. And this time his eyes do meet Staci’s, and they are alive and bright with something unnamable.

He flicks a button on the short wave, tunes a dial and suddenly it’s Only You. It’s already halfway through, picks up at the second verse, blaring over the airwaves.

Staci’s head spins, he sways forward, nose clipping against Jacob’s shoulder. Jostled. His teeth snag on his lower lip, too sharply, it cuts through the haze, sings brightly in his blood.

“Are you gonna be good for me,” Jacob is saying, whispering in his ear physically. “All I want is for you to be good for me. God damn you, Pratt. God damn you.”

God damn him indeed.

The raw need in Jacob’s voice, that layered, weak yearning. Please be good. Begging him. It’s liquid in Staci’s gut, molten, mutable arousal.

They’re equally fucked here.

Jacob isn’t weak in this way.

And yet and yet...

Maybe Only in this way. Only for Staci. Dog eat dog.

They’re kissing again.

Staci doesn’t know who initiates it, who’s traitorous head moves to bring their lips together. Jacob’s beard and his own stubble scratching against each other. Drowning out the song.

And fill my heart with-with-with l—

Or mostly.

It’s Staci pushing the two of them toward the cot. Staci on top when they land, legs spread, knees digging into Jacob’s hips. Staci’s hand grabbing Jacob’s by the wrist and pinning it over his head. A new dynamic, a thrilling one. Intoxicating.

Jacob could break the hold, easy. One strain of his thick wrists and he would be free, but he doesn’t. His fingers wind together, arching beneath Staci. A smooth, taut line of muscle and submission.

Submission.

Say it again. Do it again. You are meat. You are mine.

Jacob’s hips are pressing up against Staci’s ass, rutting the unmistakable bulge of his cock against him. Oh the weakness, the weakness. The sacrifices.

Staci gives the wrists in his grip a squeeze, meaningful, keep them here, and then he lets go. Sits up more fully, unzipping his jeans. Pushing them down. He gets one leg free and it’s enough, maneuverability, he starts in on the button for Jacob.

The whole time Jacob watches him and he watches Jacob’s hands. Wringing around each other, white-knuckles and red pressure. Straining. A power balance at last, even if it’s Jacob choosing to share.

He’s still choosing it; it means something.

“Fuck,” he says as he presses their cocks together. This is the first time he’s really seen them against each other like this, the first time he has cared to look. The thick head on Jacob’s, red and ruddy against his own darker one, slimmer one.

The tendons in Jacob’s wrists stand out like they are made of iron, valleys in the skin. Aching, they must ache to grab and to take and to claim but Jacob doesn’t. He tilts his chin when Staci’s teeth drag down his throat, baring it.

Submitting. Submitting. Fucking submitting.

Staci smiles against Jacob’s neck, grinding his hips down. Jacob squirms, his legs bend at the knee, pressing against Staci’s back, catching in the fabric of his shirt. Every sound Jacob makes is wounded. Weak. Punched out of him.

Like he is already close.

And maybe he is. Maybe giving up control, maybe being weak in this way with someone he trusts—trusts, the Only person outside of his brothers that he trusts, trusts—really gets him going.

“Am I doing good,” Staci asks. “Are you happy?”

Jacob rolls his head. Feet pressed flat to the mattress, giving some leverage to grind into Staci’s grip. “You are,” he says. “Nnn—shit, Stac-Staci—“

Again.

Staci twists his grip just to hear Jacob moan again. To hear him hiss and stutter. “F-fuck,” Jacob swears. “Staci—“ He is gripping his own fingers hard enough it’s a wonder they aren’t broken. Staci spares them a glance between watching their cocks in his fist.

The Good Soldier.

“You can let go,” Staci says. “You can touch. Want you to.” He swallows, distracted when Jacob immediately does. One hand groping Staci’s chin to align their lips, the other zipping down to curl over Staci’s fingers. Smoothing the glide over their flesh, squeezing them tighter together.

It seems to go by so quickly after that. Jacob’s tongue traces his teeth and Jacob’s fingers press Staci’s thumb harder against the crown of his dick and then he is grunting and thrusting and coming between them. Making a mess. An absolute, God awful mess.

A mess.

The fondness Staci feels as Jacob slumps under him. Eyelids fluttering. The all too human blush on his cheeks and down his neck. The beat of his heart under Staci’s palm when Staci presses it flat on Jacob’s chest to hold his weight up. Fingers curling in Jacob’s shirt.

A mess.

Only a mess.

Only an inextricable and cutting tangle. A nest of barbed wire and too honed emotion.

Only you can make this change in me. Thrill me like you do. And fill my heart with love for you.

“Make me come,” Staci says. Guiding the dead weight of Jacob’s hand around his cock. “Tell me I’m yours and that you...you want me. That I’m-I’m good for you.”

Jacob’s eyes open. For the first time for the first time Staci can trace how absolutely lost to this they both are. The softness, the human fucking weakness. They never should have started this. Never should have begun something that has no good way to end.

“You are mine,” Jacob says. He inhales, fingers sliding over Staci’s skin, working the tip of his dick in short, maddening strokes. “I hate how much I want you. Cannot stop wanting you.”

Staci nods. He whines through his nose, fingers slicking through the mess on Jacob’s abdomen, staining his jeans where they weren’t pushed away enough.

“You’re getting stronger,” Jacob says. “I can feel you getting stronger for me everyday. Trying harder.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Come on then. Let me see you finish with my name on your lips. You look so good when you say it; too brazen for your own good.” Jacob’s own tongue swipes over his lips. Always been so good at being boisterous and dirty. The better talker of the two of them.

Staci nods again, hangs his head. The praise isn’t even necessary anymore, not really, but it’s a convenient excuse. He comes practically wailing Jacob’s name, bent double in Jacob’s lap, panting wetly against Jacob’s chest.

Damn you, he thinks, damn you, damn you.

He doesn’t even know which one them he means. Both of them. The pair of them.

Staci goes to swing his leg back over Jacob’s body but only gets so far before Jacob’s hands stop him. Pin him, rolling the two of them so they are spooned together, Staci caught between Jacob’s body and the wall.

“What are you—“ he starts to say which only serves to get him a warning hush. Jacob’s big, big hand on his side, resting comfortably in the fold of his hip.

“We have...big things happening,” Jacob says. “Soon. Very, very big things. So take a nap, Pratt. Just.” Staci can feel the way Jacob swallows over the word. Jacob breathing against the back of his neck. “Just stop talking. Get some rest.”

Staci stares at the wall, relaxing minutely into the furnace that is Jacob’s body. It’s far, far too easy. To be lulled by Jacob’s heartbeat, by Jacob’s cradling arms.

Like lovers.

Like lovers.

With no happy ending anywhere in sight. Happy endings, like monsters, Staci figures, are the stuff of fairytales. With any luck, they’ll both be dead by the end of this. It’s the happiest he can hope for.

Beaten and broken and dead, dead, dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Probably got two more to go and it’ll be finito for real. I can already tell you guys next chapter is going to be heavy, heavy, heavy. We’re following canon events so...nothing good to come from here on out.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The beginning of the end.

Seven whole days.

Staci watches her every one of them.

She’s laying in a cell at the back of the hospital, still dirty concrete, dirty bars but somehow she looks less vulnerable. She doesn’t come to very often, she only seems to surface when there’s a canteen pressed to her lips. Water trickling down her throat.

Her eyes animal and base whenever they open. The lens of her aviators had been shattered when she had arrived; Jacob ordered them taken from her on the second day of her captivity.

She looks wrong without them, stripped somehow of her dignity.

She’s like a wild cat. A panther or a lioness. Lean muscle. Silken strength. More than once it is Staci sent in to hold the canteen while she writhes in training, keeping her body going despite the absence of her mind. He holds her arms, to her sides, marvels at the feel of her. Penned, waiting, hair-trigger.

So, so strong.

Better than anyone else he has ever worked with in Jacob’s hell. She surpasses them all. She surpasses him.

Six minutes.

Friday midnight. It’s all so close. So delicate. Staci is afraid to look at it, to handle it too closely. If he does it will shatter in his hands. Slice him to ribbons.

He’s unlocking the cage on the seventh day of her capture when Jacob unexpectedly strolls through the doors. He’s carrying a folding chair. The canteen of water shakes in Staci’s fist until he forces himself to relax, to act naturally.

Jacob has been surprisingly absent the last few days. Leaving Staci detailed notes—that slanted script on loose leaf paper, pulled from some spiral-bound notebook with the frilly edges not even completely peeled off and Staci had spent an hour picking at it, pulling each little tab free from the perforated sections—describing the care Rookie is to undergo.

So far Staci has followed the instructions to the letter.

He steps back when Jacob approaches. Eyes to the floor, careful and subservient. Ever since their last encounter things have seemed so treacherous, so traitorous. Some part of Staci wants to just submit to Jacob.

Forever Only his; it wouldn’t be so bad. Protected and sheltered. The collapse is coming, whatever that means, and Jacob will keep him safe from it.

An equal—bigger part of him, simply cannot stomach the lie any more. Jacob’s fond, bordering on adoring touches. The knowledge Staci now has that when he goes, when he finally, finally escapes, he will be taking a part of Jacob with him.

More than a voice in his head. More than bruises. More than Training.

They have each ripped off a piece of themselves and given it fully to the other. There is no turning from that detail, there is no way out from under it. All Staci can do is grit his teeth and ignore it for the moment. Just pretend that it doesn’t exist.

“How’s she doing?” Jacob asks. Settling in the chair. One leg crossing over the other. Fingers drumming against his ankle. The muscles in his forearm twitching with the movement. In time to Only You, it’s always in time. Only ever in time.

“Hasn’t woken yet. Not really. She’s...”

“You haven’t fed her?”

“No, sir. You told me not to.”

Jacob’s eyes slide over him. Jacob’s teeth flash in the distracting pink of his mouth. “Good boy,” he says. He looks the other way, back toward the doors he came from. He snaps his fingers.

A Peggie carrying a bowl of...of something scurries in. Hands the bowl off and scurries away. It looks like deer meat, pulped and almost raw, even though the bowl is steaming and hot in Staci’s hands when Jacob passes it to him.

“Go ahead, peaches,” Jacob says. “Put it in there. She’ll wake quick enough, you’ll see.”

Staci grips the bars for balance, maneuvers the bowl between them. The metal of it scrapes against the concrete. The steam wafts in her direction.

Her body moves in an smooth wave. She sits up. Her eyes open. She grunts, voice catching in her throat, then her eyes fall to the meat and she is on the bowl like something inhuman. Her back bows as she shovels the food into her mouth. Kneeling at the temple of Jacob’s small kindnesses. It could have been dog food.

She’ll probably end up vomiting it up all the same with the way she is cramming it into her. Staci can see bits of it, clinging to her chin. Fat and oil slicking her fingers.

There’s still a few morsels of it left when her eyes finally drift up to Jacob, smirking down at her from his chair.

“Seven days,” he muses, teasing. “You must be hungry.” Huuuungry. Drawn out.

Rook’s eyes narrow. She scrapes her fingers through the bottom of the bowl anyway, the hollow sound of her nails on metal, scoops the last few chunks into her mouth. Defiant. Staci is right right right.

Jacob grins, amused. He nods. “Yeah,” he says. “Did you know it takes ten days for civilization to collapse?” He scratches his neck, tilts his head. Staci understands, implicitly somehow what is expected of him.

The broken show.

He’s done it before.

He takes the knife from his belt and turns it in his palms. Rook is watching him, her eyes are on him even though Jacob is still talking, drawing and soft. Explaining his madness, his brilliance. The collapse, the collapse. Society on the brink.

Staci’s hands are Only shaking a little bit as he draws the blade along Jacob’s throat. Up over his bobbing Adam’s apple, trembling and careful. Jacob usually isn’t enumerating when he does this, chatting so much could throw off Staci’s delicate, delicate work.

Staci can feel the way Rook wants him to turn the knife deadly. How she would. Rip the blade right under Jacob’s jaw, a second, gaping mouth.

He closes his eyes.

He thinks about the truck.

“I was in Iraq during the first Gulf War,” Jacob says. Lowering his chin as Staci finishes another stroke. As Staci wipes his blade clean on his hip. Little red hairs sticking to the fabric. He squeezes his eyes closed. Holsters the knife. “Eighty-second Airborne. All-Americans. Hoo-rah.” Jacob smiles. True warmth. Fondness. Pride.

Staci turns he picks up the canteen he had placed down when Jacob had arrived. He turns it in his hands.

Jacob swallows. The warmth fades. “One night there was an ambush,” Jacob says. Holding his hands out. Staci splashes some of the water from the canteen onto them. He watches Rook watching. The way her eyes flutter, glittering in her head as that precious, precious liquid spills onto the dirt.

“Me and this guy named Miller got separated from the unit,” Jacob continues. “No food. No radio.” His eyes go distant, staring beyond the bars, beyond Rook, beyond Montana even. Jacob’s lip curls. “Nearest base two hundred clicks to the South. So we just start walking.” He blinks. Looks over his shoulder at Staci, palm up.

Staci hands him the canteen.

“Well, by the third day I knew we were lost. Day six...ran outta water. You know what that’s like, dontcha? Difficult to swallow—“

They watch him drink, just a sip, swishing it around in his mouth. The wet sound of it. Swish, swish through his teeth. Jacob spits, hands the canteen back.

Staci has never heard this story before. He’s heard plenty of Jacob’s stories, war horrors told to the captives to help break them, but something about this one is more deeply personal. Rests closer to the person Jacob truly is.

It cannot end well either, Staci knows that. You are meat. Sacrifice. He feels where this is going.

“On the seventh day Miller’s legs started going all wonky. Did you know your brain starts to eat your muscles in order to survive?” Jacob grins, macabre. He nods his head forward. “That’s why you’re so goddamn skinny. And by the eighth day, the wolves were closing in. And I looked at Miller and I could tell we were as good as dead. And I accepted that. And in that acceptance came clarity.” Jacob looks up as he says it. That divine gift. Joseph’s madness, the voice in the dark.

Clarity.

The truck. Midnight. The patrols, two men they can slip so long as they aren’t on the half-hour mark. A third on the stair they will have to deal with, but Staci is fast and Rook is strong and it will do. It will do.

Clarity.

Clarity.

Jacob is standing, still talking, grinning. Holding Rook up by her jacket. Her eyes flicker over his face. Disgusted.

You are meat.

They are all meat.

Survival of fittest. The sacrifices of the weak.

Jacob extends a hand and Staci places the music box in his palm. He watches the betrayal on Rook’s face, her eyebrows flexing. She slips when Jacob lets go of her to turn the key of the box, her fingers wrap around the bars.

There is a tear in her gloves. Blood on her knuckles.

She backs away.

“The weak have their purpose,” Jacob says. “You’ll see that soon enough.” He opens the box and the tune starts up.

She collapses.

It goes quicker than Staci expects. Everything is moving so quickly now.

—

Friday morning is two days away.

Until it isn’t.

One day away.

Until it isn’t.

Thursday night, eleven pm and Staci is a nervous wreck. He needs to do it, has to tonight because she won’t make it another week, but the anxiety and adrenaline is so built up in him he feels like he could scream. He’s found her things where they were stashed, stuffed in a room with the other belongings taken from their captives.

Her sunglasses right on top.

Shattered lens and all.

A rifle. A handgun with gold plating. He puts them in a duffle and stores them in the war room.

Preparations.

A canteen of water and his day’s ration of food he stuffs in there as well. He knows only that the truck makes its way west from St. Francis’s; that it winds it’s way out toward the PIN-KO radar station. With luck they’ll be long off it by then.

He shifts his weight. He stares at the clock, willing it to go faster. The second hand ticks by, every click of it feels like it takes an hour.

Eleven forty.

He bites his nails. Looks out at the courtyard below. The few patrolling Peggies.

Eleven forty-one.

In an hour they will be gone. Be almost gone. In the home stretch of it. In an hour it will be over. Finally, finally be over.

Staci breathes. He lowers himself to sit in the chair at Jacob’s desk. Where it all began. Staci’s fingers shaking around the handle of the knife. The then-unfamiliar weight of Jacob’s cock between his palms.

A lifetime ago now.

God, how things have changed.

He looks at the clock, though he really doesn’t have to. Below, from the courtyard he hears the rumble of an engine, the clanging of the gate.

Midnight on the dot.

It’s time to go.

—

“Wake up,” he says. Leaning against the bars. Staring in at her. She’s surfacing. He can see it. The ways she twists toward his voice. Strong enough to hear him over the fog in her mind.

So, so strong.

“Wake up,” he says again. “Open your eyes! Wake up, Rook!”

She starts to. Her hands raise in front of her face, like she is warding something off. And then she blinks. Blinks again. Her eyes meet Staci’s, confusion bright within hers. She sits up.

Thirty-three after. They have to go. He leans further against the bars. “I’m gonna get you outta here,” he says. “Okay? And we’re gonna get outta here. Okay? Only you.” He nods. He can hear the song, but he can ignore it.

“Only you,” he tells her and she nods.

“Hey!” A voice behind him. Z. Reynolds. Backpacker. Civilian. Dumb luck, brought in half a day ago, unbroken but he will be. “What about me,” he asks, reaching through his bars for Staci’ back. “What about me?”

Staci doesn’t have time for this. He doesn’t have time, he doesn’t have time.

“You aren’t strong enough,” he snaps. Pointing. Z. Reynolds shrinks back. Staci has already forgotten him. He licks his lips.

“You have to get out of here,” he tells, Rook, fingers shifting around the key. “Before it starts again.” He slides it home as she stands. As she approaches him.

She is shivering slightly. Starving. Half-mad with it. They both are, stark-raving. Only crazy. They can worry about it when they’re free.

“Follow me,” he says. He swings the door open for her.

She steps out.

She never even hesitates.

Thirty-five after. The window is shutting, they will make it by the skin of their teeth and no more. He touches her arm.

“We have to be careful,” he says. Pushing open the back door to the building. “I’ve mostly got it...got it worked out but...”

“You’ve been planning this?” she asks. The first words she has spoken in a long, long time. Her voice is cracked and horrible sounding.

He should have brought her water. Stupid, stupid.

He nods. The two of them take the first set of stairs two at a time. Their boots echoing on the linoleum. The quick, reverberating sounds of their breathing. The breath of a hundred people, silent witnesses to their crime.

Only there is no one. Only them. It is Only them.

Thirty-six.

“There will be a...a guard,” Staci says. “At the next set of stairs, we’ll need to—“

Rook nods. Her arms tense, shoulders squaring as she walks. Strong. God, he never should have doubted her. “I can handle them,” she says.

They hang a left down a service hall, Staci in the lead. Dropping his stance slightly as they approach the final door. The guard on the stairs usually faces the landing to Jacob’s room, but there is no guarantee he hasn’t turned or wandered closer or farther away. He could be one floor up or two, he could be behind the damn door as it opens. Could be anywhere.

Too many variables.

Staci reaches out. As silently as he can he turns the knob. And pokes his head through the opening. It was an emergency stairwell once. The lighting is bad, dim, running on an old genny. He can see nothing but shadows. Stairs leading up into the gloom.

How many times has he walked them with Jacob? This is the first time in a long time he has felt so utterly intimidated.

Staci steps back when Rook touches his side. He lets her take point. He shouldn’t, not with how weakened she must be; but he does. He trusts that she is stronger than him.

He follows her through the gloom of the stairs, up the first flight. Up the second.

The guard should be here.

But there is no guard.

They round the third flight without incident. Staci’s heart is in his throat. Wild, racing pulse. There is no one on the stairs. No guard. No fucking guard tonight.

Small, blessed miracles.

Rook is giving him a look, an eyebrow raised in question, but Staci just shakes his head. He doesn’t know, but he isn’t about the second-guess it.

They enter Jacob’s war room at thirty-nine after.

He just see the truck across the courtyard. The men just finishing loading it.

“Where are we going,” she says. The first time she has sounded truly concerned. 

Following a madman, a lunatic. Jacob’s prized and bred bitch.

Staci licks his lips. “He knows you’re ready.” He takes Rook’s arm, squeezes just lightly for emphasis. “To do it.”

Her eyes narrow. She shakes her head. Not getting it. Staci pulls her toward the desk. Where he had been sitting hardly an hour earlier. Nothing has changed. A photo of Jacob, reports and reports.

“Look,” Staci says. Tapping his fingers against the paperwork. One two three. “Trials.”

She shakes her head again. He pulls her over to the cork board. The string. The planning. Little thumbtacks dug into the wood. Eli Palmer.

“See,” Staci says. “He’s got it all planned out. One, two, three,” he says. Gesturing. Her eyes follow his movements but she isn’t following. He can feel her not following.

“One, two, three. One two three, one two three then he’s got you! It becomes second nature. Routine. He gets in your head and you don’t even realize it.”

This is the only lie Staci tells her, a merciful one. He can feel Jacob in there, in his head, squirming like something living, Jacob’s cock in his throat, Jacob’s hands around his neck fuck fuck to be free is so close so close—

“You can’t ever go back,” he says. “You understand?” He turns from her. Glances up at the clock on the wall. Forty-two. Forty-two. “You can’t ever go back.”

She nods, looking bewildered, but she nods. He can explain it better, later. On the truck or in the woods. When they are free.

Free.

“Come on,” he says. Crossing toward the balcony. “The truck...the truck’s gotta be there...gotta get on that truck.”

Forty-three.

He picks up the duffle he had packed earlier. Water, rations, her guns. It’ll get them to the next stop, hopefully, to the Ranger Station maybe. Or the F.A.N.G. Center. Somewhere she has friends but is far, far away from Eli.

He looks over the balcony. The driver is just climbing into the seat of the truck.

“It’s almost time,” Staci says. “I studied the route for weeks, it’s the only way out. You’ll be safe if you don’t—“

He pauses, head cocked like an animal sensing danger. His gut coils.

From somewhere, round the back of the hospital, the dirty little prison camp, he hears Jacob’s voice. An echo of an echo:

“Find her; that’s an order.”

His imagination.

Or is it.

More yelling now, an overlap of voices. And Jacob again rising over them all: “Search everywhere.”

“No,” Staci says. The driver has just gotten settled when the alarm kicks in. Staci can see him jump a little in the cab, can see him peer out of the windshield. “No. No, no. Not yet.”

Forty-four after.

“Aw fuck,” Staci says. Like that even begins to describe it. The dulcet tones of Only You start bleeding through the speakers all around the base.

“Fuck,” he says again. “No. No!”

He was never getting out of here. He should have known that. Rook’s eyelids are already going heavy, Staci can see the way she sways. Giving in to the song. One. Two. Three.

It is too late.

“I’m sorry,” he says. He is, in a way. He is so so sorry.

Forty-five after.

There isn’t another minute to spare. Staci shoves her, sees the way her eyes go suddenly wide as she slams against the waist-high balcony railing. And then weightlessness. She tips, gravity takes her. She is gone.

He hears the sound of her body hitting something, the impact of metal, but it’s too late for anything else. The door to Jacob’s war room is opening and the song is getting louder, only Only ONLY louder and he’s grabbing at his head, writhing. Something gives.

There is blood under his nails.

Running down his chin.

But she is gone, it’s all he can do. All he can hope for.

Jacob isn’t with the Peggies who burst into the room. Staci watches them from where he has collapsed on the floor. The clean sweep they give, checking under desks, under Jacob’s bed. But she is gone.

A boot catches him in the face, no way it’s accidental. Staci barely even has the energy to curl in on himself.

The song is paralyzing. All-consuming.

It will kill him before they even can.

And then like that it is over and rough hands are dragging Staci up by the collar. “Take him to Jacob,” a Peggie says, and the name is like a balm to Staci’s senses.

It shouldn’t be, he knows.

Jacob will not help him.

Not now. Not ever again.

“Hey fucker,” another voice says. A hand grabs Staci’s shoulder. He turns his head and the stock of a gun smashes across his temple and everything goes dark, dark, dark.

—

He wakes.

Downstairs. He doesn’t come down to the belly of the beast that often, but he recognizes the grated ceilings. Exposed piping.

He rolls his head.

Lancing pain in his temple, across the whole front of his face. A concussion, probably. He shouldn’t sleep, might never wake up. Would it be so bad?

His eyelids flutter.

There is blood on his chest, flaking off his chin. Whatever ruptured in his nose has clogged. Poorly. Every indrawn breath rattles in a foreign, ugly way.

“Still alive?” Jacob’s voice asks. From somewhere in the shadows.

Staci freezes. For the first time since waking, he tries to move his hands. Only to find them bound. He knew they would be, but the knowledge doesn’t make it any better. Doesn’t stop the throaty whine that builds in his chest.

“Jacob,” he says.

“Yeah,” Jacob answers. “Yeah, I’m here.”

Staci lets his breath out between his teeth. His fingers curl on the arms of the chair. The duct tape is already working the skin of his wrists raw.

The game is over. Done with. Final.

“Were you surprised, at least?” Staci asks. “Did it hurt you?”

He can hear the way Jacob’s breathing catches. The sharp hiss of it. Jacob steps into the light. Once upon a time maybe Staci would have been scared. Maybe part of him still is. The part that has kept him alive so long, has scrambled and scrapped to keep him going. It’s easy to ignore it now, to crush it beneath his heel.

He is stronger than that.

He got her out.

“I was hoping you’d apologize,” Jacob says. “Have some fucking dignity in your defeat.”

Staci grins. Here at the end, who knew he’d find the balls he had thought he had lost? “Defeat?” he echoes. “She’s gone, Jacob. Poof, out of your hands.”

Those same hands that catch him, point blank, in the jaw. One punch, two. Quick succession, so fast it’s almost the same sting. Staci feels his nose go sideways, feels something shift in the top of it, right between his eyes. Blooming pain.

A tooth arcs out of his head. Glittering in the air, white and jagged in the red, red spill of his blood. Goodbye, Staci thinks, ridiculously. One more piece of him, stripped away for good.

“I can get her back any time that I want. You’ve bought her time and she’s bought your death.” Jacob cracks his knuckles, shaking his hands out. “Fair trade, Ex-Deputy?”

His eyes are a blue fire. Cold, cold, cold. Blazing. Emotion in them that Staci has seen just hints of before. Oh, yeah, oh, yes. He hurt him.

Staci has that at least, at least.

His grin doesn’t falter. “Worth it,” he says.

“Okay,” Jacob. “Alright. We’ll see what a few days does to your pride. People get so desperate, you know, once you’ve denied them what they think of as their rights. You’ve seen it, hell, you’ve lived it. We just have to get you back to animal, to starving. I’ll see you in a week, Pratt. And you’ll confess everything to me. Gladly you’ll—“

Jacob cuts himself off. He turns away.

Staci watches him go. Any lingering warmth from his victory goes with him. Staci’s wrists tug uselessly at his bonds.

He is alone.

He is alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well that was a beast. I hate referencing straight from the game scenes like that but I wasn’t sure how else to do it so...hope it wasn’t too jarring hahah.
> 
> One more left. Guess I’ll say it here: everyone’s support on this has been amazing. This went from literally being a one shot excuse to write a bad wrong blow job into so much more and it’s all because of your support and encouragement! Thank you. Seriously. Thank allllll of you!!


	9. Chapter 9

He doesn’t know how many days he spends in that room.

Time runs together. Sometimes there is water. Less times there is food. Time will be his killer.

The video Jacob had taken plays in repeat behind him. It becomes time. Staci’s only form of it.

Judas.

I won’t kill you.

God, God, God just fucking kill him.

The Peggies who bring him his meager rations won’t look him in the eyes any longer. Staci knows he reeks of shit and piss and sweat and probably still of Jacob’s come. The copper tang of his blood still lingers in the air even if he can’t smell it any longer. Immune to it.

Judas.

Time will.

Only time will.

The door opens.

Staci’s heart lurches in his throat. Because he knows it will be Jacob, one of these days it will be Jacob coming to gloat, to rub in Staci’s face that Rook is dead and extinguish any lasting, lingering hope he might have.

The door opens.

Instinctively Staci recoils.

“Holy shit,” a voice says. Muffled slightly. A Northern accent, familiar and warm. Horrified but...but...

Staci’s eyes open.

Rook is covering her mouth and nose with her hand. Eyebrows raised so high they are easily visible over her sunglasses. How she can wear them down here in the dark is—

“Fuck,” she says again. “Pratt...Dep—I thought you. He told me you were—“ she shakes her head. Approaching. Trembling, she is shaking from head to toe.

“Staci,” she says. “I’m so sorry. What’s happened to you?”

What’s happened?

What has happened?

Only the end of the fucking world—Staci’s fucking world. If she is here...if she is here then she was stronger than Jacob. Then Staci is stronger than Jacob. Stronger through sacrifice. Stronger through pain.

Because in the end Jacob had been right about some things.

Staci can’t help but feel like something is wrong. They never should have come here. They can burn it all to the ground, rip up every fucking lingering root left by the Seeds and still they will have been right.

The end is upon them.

They had always just been too weak to see it.

And now...

And now.

There is Only one thing left for Staci to do.

He forces himself to stand, muscles gone wonky, shaking and weak. He forces himself up and he makes himself stay. He is strong enough to do this.

He has to be.

Jacob’s love has molded him to be.

And he cannot disappoint.

—

It takes weeks for them to declare him fit enough to leave the Den. Rook looks at him when he asks to go, her lip firmly between her teeth, her eyes narrowed.

But she marks the spot on a map for him. Offers to tag along.

Staci declines.

He needs to do it alone. Maybe something in her understands that. The two of them, kindred in this. In the solitude of it. The Only ones who know.

It’s not far. Staci climbs the rocks right outside of the Wolf’s Den and looks down at the stretch of the mountain below him.

Outside.

The sun is like a physical ache, peeling across Staci’s skin. He doesn’t know how long it has been since he felt it but he feels nocturnal, cave-dwelling as it warms him.

He feels inhuman.

Shedding the outer shell of him.

Stronger beneath it.

He takes a breath.

He hikes.

He’s winded by the time he makes it up the final peak. Huffing and sweating. The force would be ashamed of him, he should feel ashamed of himself.

But he doesn’t.

He doesn’t know what he was expecting to find either, when he gets to the spot Rook had circled. It’s any clearing in any section of these woods. Rocks and trees and tangling brambles.

Jacob’s body is not here.

There is no decomposing, gory mess for him to mourn. Or to bury. Or to spit on.

Staci casts about, aimless. He touches one rock that is large enough to sit on, he imagines he can see the bloodstains, deep, deep in the stone.

Imagines.

There is nothing.

The weeks have erased all traces of Jacob Seed and his final rest.

Staci leans back on the rock.

He stares up at the sky. And the clouds. Moving gracefully and slowly. Passing like giants and passing no judgement.

Forever, he thinks.

God.

Fuck forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not the chapter it was supposed to be. I ended up cutting an entire sequence of breaking Staci down because it was just Too Much. If you guys want it I might post it separately but. Whew it was just A Lot.
> 
> Hope this suffices as an end.
> 
> This has been a journey and a half, so thank you all for the amazing outpouring of love.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m thinking I might write more of this but...idk

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [oh darkness (i wanna sing your song forever)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14313633) by [devils_trap](https://archiveofourown.org/users/devils_trap/pseuds/devils_trap)




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